Painting With Eyes Closed: The Artwork of Filipe Figueira

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - ‘Painting With Eyes Closed,’ an exhibition by Filipe Figueira opens at the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery on Friday June 21st, 6-9pm. 

“You always have to come up with the title for shows. Usually they're sort of pretentious and arty, but there's a reason for this one. It alludes to the process. I'm inspired by scenes on Cortes. I'll go somewhere, sketch and I'll get inspired, but a lot of my ideas come just when I'm at the point of falling asleep. The painting will come into my head. Sometimes really detailed thoughts, like the paints to use, the techniques, the layout and even very specific paints and paint mixes pop into my head. Often I have to get up and sketch. Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I'll be thinking about the painting and that becomes the basis of the paintings. They are scenes from Cortes, but they're mediated through this process,” he explained.

“Most of these paintings have been done in the last three months.”

“This show is actually in fond memory of Lisa Gibbons. As well as being a lovely woman,  she was a huge encouragement and very positive about my painting. It's actually bittersweet that as I paint them, I think of her and I'm still a bit stunned that she won't be here to see it.”

Cortes Currents: Was she your teacher? 

Filipe Figueira: “No, no, she didn't teach me specifics. we had very different techniques, but she was just very encouraging in terms of continuing.” 

Cortes Currents: Why is painting important to you?  

Filipe Figueira: “It's something I've wanted to do for decades, probably since I was a kid, and somehow I waited till  the COVID lockdown happened.  I'd actually brought some paints from England when I emigrated to Canada about 25 years ago. I found them and then started painting. It's just a huge, meditative, therapeutic, helpful thing to do.  I just love the process.” 

Cortes Currents: I notice some of your paintings look like familiar places - like the mouth of the Gorge, or looking through the trees at Hanks Beach - but at the same time they are not exact representations. Do you want to talk about that? 

Filipe Figueira: “I'm not particularly interested in painting an absolutely accurate picture of a scene. What I'm trying to capture is more the feeling that I have,  the sense of the place, and trying to capture different angles of the same scenes, different  things that are happening in the scene. Sometimes it's the texture on the rocks or the movement of the light. So trying to capture the whole thing.”

“There's one I've done of Plunger Pass in a winter storm. It's a very monochrome one because that's the winter light. There's not much light but  the background is a wave and the foreground is more of the  islands and stuff.  It  plays with both scenes. The waves  were pretty dominant in the scene, but were just painted in a different mishmash of senses.” 

“There's another one that I really like, which is also Plunger Pass. Again it  breaks down the scene, uses different textures and different techniques. I've started  mixing media a little bit. I've been painting in oils, but for this show, it's predominantly in acrylic paint and I've been experimenting with Indian inks and acrylic inks  as well. enjoying the texture that those can create.  I really enjoy paint. Sounds a bit weird, but I like the way that it dribbles, it runs, it mixes, accidents happen with it that you can use.  The other Plunger Pass painting is a really good example of that.” 

“I've got some of Hank's Beach where it's focusing on the shapes of the rocks and almost like the historical movement of the rocks and trying to capture that.”