Marcas da Minha Existência - Registros Gráficos

IMPRINTS OF MY EXISTENCE - Graphic Registers

The images etched on metal plates applying different engraving techniques i.e.
drypoint, mezzotint, aquafortis, aquatint, which I have used throughout my career as a plastic artist, always sprang up spontaneously since the focus of those images was hardly ever centered around a “specific theme”.
When there was an actual theme, I never had the intention to illustrate it or that it would yield a faithful copy of figurative images, but I would rather represent the images in question from a starting point.
In the poetics that underpins this study, those shapes emerge absolutely “free” without any connection to figuration only to express the drawing that I wanted to create, be it etched into an acrylic plate, metal plate or onto a polyesthyrene surface.
Initially, I used the etching printing technique with the purpose of enhancing reproducibility, which is an inherent trait of print etching.
The visual world of plastic art language, with its representations and imagery, is the world to which I feel closely connected and use to represent the events around me; I construe and appropriate this language to tell and express things that I know about my macro and micro worlds.
Life cannot be separated from art, they do not exclude each other. Experiencing and representing the world in which I live (to express my art) are complementary parts of an integrated whole.
Lines versus mass, textures versus polished plates. Artists can choose from any material, many are the options available to them. Choice is a practical attitude required for the praxis (practice) of a studio’s daily activities. Choice is at the artist’s disposal to capture the look and feel of his/her work of art.
The technical choice relies precisely on that which mostly adapt to the artist’s own, unique modus operandi in his/her plastic representation of the world. Each artist’s particular way of seeing, feeling and representing.


Cássia Gonçalves