DARK MATTERS #2 Painting

Durães-West main theme is “contrast”. Differences in colour, mark, tone, or shape that contribute to the visual effect of a design or image. He explores how materials, form and colours energise, harmonise or disrupt a work. “Contrast, the state of being strikingly different from something else in juxtaposition or close association.” Darkness/Light, Mark/Form, Urban/Nature, Land/Sea, Desert/Sky Whilst studying painting and art history at Central Saint Martins, London, Durães-West could not decide whether he preferred the colour field style of Rothko or the gestural, action painting of Pollock and DeKooning. Like Clifford Still, Durães-West entertains the idea of combining both practices of colour field painting with gestural, action paintings. Building complex layers of paint to attain contrasting depths of colour, gesture and field. Durães-West could place his underlying influence in contrast from growing up in Saudi Arabia juxtaposed between the sea, a bustling growing city and the vast desert. Between a strong Arab culture and the European of his birth. He now lives and works between Lisbon and his studio in Alentejo. Lisbon, modern, urban, rich in exploration ocean culture where its inhabitants escape urban environments to enjoy the coastline. Alentejo has a rich Islamic history and a physical border between the contrasting Christian and Islamic worlds, expansive open plains of cork oak and olive trees. In his work some of the gestural marks appear to represent Arabic or Western graffiti, the colour palette the ocean or the sky at sunset or sunrise between the contrasting day and night. New departures investigate his interest in exploring the possibilities of graphic design, modern materials and technologies to continue his underlying theme of “contrast”.