Beyond
the Contour

The first act began with birds. Hummingbirds painted in gouache against absolute black — isolated, luminous, suspended. They came from a memory carried since childhood: lying on a grandmother’s sofa in Brazil on a Sunday afternoon, watching hummingbirds hover outside the window. Ten seconds, maybe thirty, of pure suspended beauty before someone called from another room and the moment dissolved.

The black background removes everything that does not matter, insisting the eye rests only on what is most precious. Brazilian tropical birds exist here against nothing else. No landscape. No distraction. Darkness as selective memory — protective, preserving.

The final act was the hardest to make and the most necessary. These paintings confronted the body directly: diabetes, self-image, masculinity, the daily negotiation between care and self-destruction. Insulin needle caps and chocolate wrappers embedded in the paint surface. The body duplicated, facing itself, suspended in the moment just before a choice is made.

Here the black line stopped protecting beauty and started defining limits. Discipline. Resistance. The distance between who one was and who one insists on becoming. The same line that once preserved becomes the boundary between impulse and care.