River Thames near Millennium Bridge London Drawing

Joao De Haro is a Brazilian-born artist who came to London sixteen years ago. Growing up in Spain from the age of eight, De Haro was influenced by the poetic Magic millenarian culture of mediterranean seaThe sea and its environment provide the basis of De Haros inspiration and fascination. It is the basis of the sea that is of more interest than the actual subject of water, namely sand. To De Haro, sand is at the core of our own environment and is at once something visible and invisible. It is beneath our cities pavements, yet visible in the cracks; beneath the sea, and yet visible on the beach. As sand is at the core of our own living world, so it is at the core of De Haros work. The variety of different sands employed by De Haro is carefully chosen in accordance with the subject matter and feeling he wishes to convey through his work. For example, his series on the subject of fish is made from the sand of the Mediterranean to convey the silence of the seas depth. In contrast, sand from meteors which hit the earth at high speed is used in his interpretation of horses to convey the speed at which they run. Not only are there very different types of sand which are sourced by De Haro on his travels and used in his work, but also sand absorbs the energy of its surroundings and acts as a catalyst for all living things. Thus sand used by children at play captures their happy energy, and sand from a depressed part of a big city captures a more negative energy: both can be used to different effect. In his work St Sebastian, De Haro uses volcanic sand from Tenerife as well as sand from a poor area of London to convey the sinister aspects of his subject.Since the material De Haro uses is living matter which also contains absorbed energy vibrations, his works influence the viewer either immediately or gradually over time. Either way, De Haro has successfully captured a vibration and revealed it to us.As a further exploration of energy vibration and the essential truth of matter, De Haro has looked at human beings who can cleverly disguise their appearance through the use of clothing. Man can be read on two different levels: as a living physical being and as a stylised personality through choice of clothing. This dual effect is employed by De Haro in his covered paintings, mostly using nylon. The effect gives us two interpretations of the work: the underlying living image made from sand, and the same image disguised by fabric.