Trees represent balance in our lives. Spending time close to a big tree can have positive effects. These artworks reflect this beneficial perspective and encourage us to continuously experiment with this positive influence.
The artistic and spontaneous inspiration behind these artworks has interesting examples in the images of both classical and contemporary photographers, such as Eliot Porter, Edward Burtynsky, and Galen Rowell, who capture the energy and unpredictable fractal beauty of trees through powerful visual imagery.
The artworks highlight the need to appreciate and protect our environment, particularly trees and forests, which play a vital role in sustaining life on Earth. By promoting living in harmony with our true nature, the artwork encourages a more balanced and sustainable life that benefits us and preserves natural resources for future generations.
Fogo is fire, it is the destructive force. It is the love of nature, the aesthetics of an ancestral place. It is a dream. It is real. It is more than real.
The exploration takes place on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that has a unique spirit inspired by the presence of the dangerously active volcano, which in 2014 completely wiped out the Chã Das Caldeiras plain, destroying the town of Portela.
This place has an incredible strength that highlights the human dimension, the shelter, the freedom to find in this remote place a bubble where you live in contact with nature and with a dimension of surprising collaboration. The volcano, despite having destroyed everything, is not an enemy. The Volcano gives and takes away. The people of Chã Das Caldeiras accept the moment, do not want to flatten everything in a selfish way, but accept and fight again without abandoning their great friend, the volcano.
With this state of mind, looking for the moods of nature these images express contemplation, peace, strength, mystery, beauty, knowing that the fury of life is there. Sooner or later we know how to capture it. Sooner or later he will take it away and then bring it back to us again.
SKIN
Black as the skin that comes out directly from Earth. The Ocean leaves its heartbeat like an ephemeral mark of ocean foam. As if it was marble. An elegant movement that I await, that I look for, that gives me a sense of harmony. The sense of ancestral beauty.
FOGO
The light of dawn is fantastic, ethereal, unreal, and outlines with a sweet lunar atmosphere the 2829 meters of the stratovolcano called “Pico”. The sand, the stones, the waves reveal the eras, the layers of hardened lava, which since the 17th century have covered the small island with lava 28 times. 7 hours are necessary to climb and admire from the highest point the unique landscape of the crater of 2014 that destroyed the entire plain of Chã Das Caldeiras.
Portela, 2018
On November 23, 2014, three earthquakes announced a terrible and devastating eruption that lasted more than two months, until February 8. The town of Portela was completely flooded. The lava continues to fill the plain of Chã das Caldeiras while the people of Portela are still rebuilding, by themselves and practically by hand, the whole town.
The center. The core. We see it as we have never seen it before. We know that it was from there that the last spectacular magma erupted in 2014. After many hours of tough climb up a human being skies down, dusting towards that mouth that connects the Earth’s soul with the external world. Everything from here has a unique perspective. The relationship between what happens within us is not the same as what we see from the outside world. Sometimes we need to suffer so we can see again. Then everything takes a more clear logic and we can even see our most intimate side, from a perspective we could not have imagined before.
IVORY
Intricate life, surprising, opens up in an instant while you run towards the volcano. A complex set of lines, each one on its own direction, intertwine, find each other, pull away from each other. The center, framed by an irregular outline, is the right dimension of our reality, uncontrollable and harmonious in its own irregularity. The acacia trees convey the miracle, run away from pain, pressure, uncertainty. A fantastic place, a unique place, a lunar place, where humanity lives a particular sociality and in a full respect relationship with nature. Good and evil defined by the cycles of nature are welcome with acceptance, with pride. Happiness. Darkness. Everything seems to fade away. Then something happens and you see the light again. Unpredictable.
I love the fractal shape of trees, navigating in the dark. It’s about getting lost and knowing that the only thing that matters is keeping exploring.
POWERFUL SUNSET
This image represents a unique place, a lunar place, where humanity lives a particular sociality and in a full respect relationship with nature. Good and evil defined by the cycles of nature are welcome with acceptance, with pride. This woman in her typical pose is the orchestra conductor of her family, her farm. Her strength, her decision, her protection is revealed by a hyperbolic gesture in a unique landscape. Sunset in this island offers a diffused light, golden, a result from the “dry mist”, from humidity always present in the air.
LUXURIOUS MAIO
The golden texture, black waves that outline indistinguishable silhouettes. The sea that tops this delicate scene. This “more than real” scene leads the sea and the organic and inorganic life with it to a unique and elegant symphony.
JOY
Tree of Joy, 2018.
Joy is a treasure. You can find it everywhere. You just have to look for it. You must want to find it. You have to really look for it.
When you find it… Joy is like a tree on a small island on the Ocean. And people smile around it. The flavours of life and air are intense. And the fire of the heart is coming out from a new volcano.
