Martinho Dias was born in 1968 in Sto. Tirso. He currently lives in Trofa, where he has a studio.
He has a master's degree in Fine Arts – Painting, from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto.
It is not possible to remain indifferent to Martinho Dias' painting. He captures your gaze, if nothing else because of the unusual break of formal environments he offers us. The dissonant element [...] introduces a caricatural and political dimension that arouses an interpretive gaze. And those who see must reflect, even if art, as Freud intended, may be incomprehensible and enigmatic. Martinho Dias asks us for the effort of reason to give in to the delight of the eye.
And it is not difficult. Through the tension that the faces convey, through the vigorous and markedly gestural smudge, through the light and the contrast of colours and through the irony, certainly, sometimes caricatural and satirical.
To remain indifferent to Martinho Dias' painting is to remain in disquiet and ambiguity. And we men, using the scalpel of explanatory reason, tend towards what is comfortable and right. The question is whether we get there.
António Tavares (Writer)
Written Painting by Michael Cain
150 x 120 cm
Acrylic on canvas
2004
Written Painting by MICHAEL CAIN
I'm seeing blue, deep, rich, dark blues, that are darkest at the top. As one moves down the painting it becomes lighter and more red, or actually maroon/purple. The change is smooth. There are small circular lines/shapes like a "u" but with a softer curve. The come from the upper left hand side and race across to the right hand bottom corner. They are playful, they are in their own dimension. They occupy their own space on the work. They are dark but it's hard to tell what colour they really are. They swim, they love, they are saying something. From the center emanating outward in a sphere there is a ring of faces, but not clear or easy to see at all. If you first look at the work you would probably not even notice it at all. They are mostly texture. They blend with what is around them. The whole thing is rather soft, a vibe, a frequency. You can look at it as a whole and feel fine, or look at some of the specifics. Finally, it should have, underneath it all, somehow, Africa. It's about the dawn of man, the dawn of time, but before shape form, life, or you might say duality. It's religious, but not western religions.
Michael Cain
USA, September 2003