Catharsis IV Painting

Inês Gato was born in 1966 in Lisbon, Portugal. She studied at António Arroio High School and graduated from AR-CO with a degree in Graphic Design. She is also a graduate of ETIC where she studied Computer Design. She currently lives and works in Ericeira, a seaside town and her family’s Summer destination since ever. Her exploration of painting begins in 1994. In 1999, after a professional carrer in communication design, she decides to devote herself to visual arts as her main occupation. My identity comes spontaneously and intuitively. I believe if an artist’s language is forced or rationally planned, it will not be genuine. The creative process will always remain a mistery...a journey into my inner world as I filter influences and inspirations from the outside. The importance of the individual is integral to my painting. Artistic creation with a focus on human emotions and expressions. Ideas come to me in all sorts of circumstances, such as walking, dreaming, listening to music or seeing an picture...and very often working. Formally and chomatically, I’m interested in the connecting thread between the microcosm and the macrocosm. A magical and surprising universal law tha I believe exists. I bring and transform reality into compositions populated by imaginary beings. Organic beings, sometimes combined with geometrical abstrationism, equipped with emotions and energy who interact with on another. The compositions’formal struture and proportional balance stand in opposition to the perception of motion and transformation. An irony that pervades my work. I paint with oils and natural hair brushes on linen canvas. Natural sunlight is paramount. My background in communication design affects my work method. I generally “draw” a preliminary study in my mind that I then put on paper. I replicate that sketch with design and image-processing software such as Photoshop. The computer provides a wonderful work tool as it offers a quick display of endless formal and chromatic variations of one composition. With that software I challenge the perception of everything that’s surrounds me recreating and stylising wath I draw or photograph. The next stage is editing and picking the final study to be painted on the canvas. As work progresses, the painting’s ‘own lige’ manifests itself beyond my preliminary study. A painting is never perfect and rarely finished. A painting exists not only inside me and for me.