Artospective: Figurative Paintings by Anderson Santos.

Rosso, óleo sobre tela, 46x38cm, 2017.

An Interview with Anderson Santos.

Who and where are you from?

Hello, I'm Anderson Santos a figurative painter born in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil in 1973. I studied Fine Arts at the Federal University of Bahia and today I live and work between Salvador and Milano, Italy, where I am artistic director of the art and technology startup called Ripensarte.

How you got into this?

Because of the work of my father who is a designer, I always had access to drawing materials at home and from a very early start I began to draw. The painting came later, when I was a teenager, it appeared as a need to put color in the drawings that I made. I started first with acrylic paint and already in the School of Fine Arts I met, through colleagues, the technique of oil on canvas and since then I dedicate myself to learn more about it. In 2015 I bought an Ipad and I discovered professional applications to draw and paint directly on the glass screen and I have produced many drawings and digital paintings. I my opinion the digital satisty my old desire to make multiples of my work, like engravings.

What is your driving force?

It seems to me that, today, what moves me is a vital need to paint, to transform what I see and feel in drawing or painting. If I do not paint or draw I do not feel complete, it has become something necessary like blinking, breathing or sleeping. I need to paint.

What kind of work you do and why?

I am a painter who is interested in the human figure, my painting is realistic and I basically make portraits of people and animals. I study very much the work of other painters and I make many references in my painting to the work of Velasquez and Francis Bacon that are for me the starting point. I'm interested in seeing how the time affects the skin, how it leaves marks and now how it rearranges the bodies.

Please tell us more about your thought process.

I always start from an idea and then I turn it into a photographic reference. If I already have a photograph that serves me to paint this idea, it's okay, If not, I make photographs with a model. Then I start painting, by digital or oil on canvas. At that point, what I'm interested in is how much I can put on or get out of there, without getting too far away from the starting point. When I'm painting a woman, I would like you to recognize that it's a woman, not a dog, but, at the same time, I wish that the marks on it should suggest you that you are looking to a paint arranging on canvas. Reminding that what's before your eyes is a painting, a work by a brain and human hands.