Ricardo Martins

Brazilian artist living in Portugal. I began conscious life as a musician and got myself a BA in Music, with Early Music and Composition on the side. Then I spent about 20 years as a photographer shooting people and landscapes and working with large-format Polaroids and B&W.
Having always gone for a painterly effect, with the digitalisation of the business I packed my stuff and went full-time painter. Self-taught, apart from a few well-chosen workshops for technique, I recently found my stride.
I'm inspired by my finally-hard-tamed impulses, them being sensual, intellectual, social (or anti-), violent, depressive and existential. I like to watch the world from the sidelines and steal the occasional slice of spacetime to work from. Fresh young people interest me for obvious reasons, and because they're in for the battles I've already fought.
And portraits. I collect faces and histories.
Usually I go for a good, well proportioned drawing, but in applying paint I prefer to keep the values and colours simple, for an expressive - but not expressionist - result. I always loved to draw so I'm constantly trying for a compromise somewhere between the painterly and the cartoonish, except where perspective is involved: I'm training myself...

Mostly self-taught. Courses and Workshops at EAV Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro. Courses at SNBA in Lisbon. A longish period working/learning at an artist's studio in Rio. 20+ years photographing professionally.

Ditto. School and local events galore.