The joy of discovering (or rediscovering?). Discover what we thought had already been discovered. The privilege of proceeding through places where only a few people have been. Paths of a pre-historical ancestry certainly cruised by other eyes. With other purposes, more objective or less. Paths of wild animals, in a more and more tamed world (where savages are of a different kind and the "jungle" is no longer in the same place).

We look at the wilderness and see some fishermen, far away, as a reference, a dot in the infinity of nothing. Playing a fundamental role in our visual perception! Dots that change and guide sight. Without them the notion of scale is lost, which leads us in another direction: abstraction. Intentional paths! Out of an option that stresses the ambiguity of image. Are they massive rocks or thin layers of schist? Clouds wandering up above or the flowing waters of the sea? It doesn't really matter. The important thing is to convey an emotion, a feeling. To stress the subjectivity of shapes with the subjectivity of the sight. To record what is seldom seen by enclosing it with a frame, by inserting it in another concept, by tearing it apart from reality, by partitioning it. Pictures of a deep, strong and wild nature. One capable of triggering terrible storms and a disturbing stillness.

" (…) Vision drift in a circular way: it tends to fall on already seen elements. (…)," says Vilém Flusser, a Czech philosopher, in one of his essays. And it is really important to revert several times to the places where we have been that many times. It is the anguish of having to descend to climb afterwards to descend once more and be forced to climb again. A succession (repetition) of purposes that lay our path and stress our goals.

To walk with the eyes, the heart, the cognition. To contemplate is to see with all the senses. It is to feel the shape and to keep the moment. And these are actually elegant, distinct moments ("Moments of Grace", as someone called them…). These are moments of an affective partiality entangled in a growing desire to have a deeper knowledge of the contents of each single moment. The previous and the following moments are definitely not the same. And what lies in-between had undoubtedly a very strong reason to be what it was.

Uncommon are the places that shake off triviality and that, just through being, exalt their own existence. They are sculptured phrases, characters marked on reliefs and deformed surfaces with signs whose particular meaning invites digression. Towards a considered study suggesting translations of our secret imagery: breasts of sand, twisted windows, for Gaudi; rafts for Saramago; ships drifting in the mist;... or anything that lies open to our most intimate interpretation.

The South-west, from the mouth of the River Seixe to Pedra do Gigante (the Giant's Stone) before Cape St Vincent. This is my laboratory of emotions. My (wide) workshop. This is where I draft my projects and where the drafts of my ideals are put together. This is where I return whenever I can, until the day when I will return forever.

Thoughts that take shape, the shape of childhood memories. "Do you remember, Grandma?: A few tiny fish for dinner!… On the other side of Poça da Rã… - Images that revive when revisited, that make our options mature and help define the themes of our existence.

So much more can be seen and interpreted. To do so, the understanding of the anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and many other morphological forms produced should be achieved through the purity of senses and intrinsic honesty of each one of us. Ephemeral as we are, in contemplation of earthly events.

Author's note
This work is a big challenge for me (perhaps the big challenge). To me pictures without people! Where are they? Where is the heat from close relations? And the stories they like to tell us? Where are the gestures and the expressions that hide behind words!? Where is their omnipresent action gone to?…
Is their presence as important as their absence?!…