"La vie est l'art et l'art est la vie..."
The need to create stems from a dissatisfaction with the state and meaning of the world, and it was with this in mind that I undertook artistic studies. I believed, and still believe, that art has the power to change the world.
From this perspective, and during my studies and early career, I produced primarily critical and satirical works, not only about the state of society, but also about the contemporary art system itself.
I developed my thinking based on the ideas of various thinkers and artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Piero Manzoni, ideas related to the infinite possibilities of the artwork and the notion that human thought is, in itself, Art. Later, through contact with a group of Portuguese artists from the 1980s (Homeoestetico), I embraced the idea (let's call it that) of life itself as a work of art.
From this perspective, I developed several distinct projects and creative approaches that represented this Universe. The objects created became not the artwork itself, but rather testimonies, remnants of this eternal artwork, of this performance that is living and being an artist. Thus, writing, music, video, and performance are my mediums for illuminating this idea, but it is above all in painting that my reflection extends furthest (to be an artist, one must be a painter, like the classical and modern masters).
With age, maturity, life changes, and a better understanding of the world, my senses have become more refined. And even if my opinion on the state of things has changed little, I have perfected my painting in a quest for the divine and the reasons that underlie it. This increasingly aesthetic quest provokes reflection. Nature, landscapes, plants, vegetables, and greenery—all of which connect or reconnect us to the earth—invite us to reflect on the course of our lives, the choices we make, and the increasingly artificial world in which we live.
The painting, raw and sometimes almost naive, is created using two modern approaches: the first, impressionistic, where the artist captures an impression of the world, of the divine; the second, where they express, through gesture, their emotion and resentment in response to this impression. To achieve this effect, I have long favored acrylic on canvas, primarily because of its quick drying time, which also allows me to obtain color saturation and a much more fluid rendering of the brushstrokes, thus reinforcing the ideas expressed.
Thus, my paintings function in series, organized by theme and idea; they support one another, engage in dialogue, create universes, and express an opinion. Painting in itself is not a work of art, but belongs to a larger whole which, in turn, presents itself as an idea and, consequently, as a work, or a representative of it – a superior work, that of life and God.
Oliveira Pedro 2026