`dreamspeak

WEBSITE | BIO | SOLO SHOWS | PRINTS | DA PORTFOLIO

Hello there, mad wonderful people!

I've been in some sort of vacation in Bug-istan.
Some annoying bug has been making a party, eating and digesting the messages in my messages center. I haven't been able to read any comments or replies to my comments. I've already contacted the help desk and it seems it is a known issue on DeviantArt. Some people are experiencing this on the site.
This fact partially explains my silence, lately.
I'm sorry for that but there's nothing I can do about it, except wait for the problem to be solved, which will be soon, I was told.

In this context, I'm thanking here in my journal for all the recent comments and favs that I haven't been able to see (except for their number and in each one of my pieces in the gallery).


On a not very different note, I've been busy both going again to University, this time to study Space Design, and preparing my next solo show in Portugal.
The show will happen in the city of Coimbra, at the Water Museum, and consists in an exhibition of 25 pieces created in the scope of the called "Digital Art" in a variety of software and with different types of display , a conference entitled "The New Digital Media in Art" and a workshop.
Everyone in the cosmic neighbourhood (or not) will be welcomed from the 9th of November to the 2nd of December. The advantage to go on the opening day is that you can assist and intervene in the conference/debate and specially to taste a fine Port wine. Cheers!

I've been working a lot for this show because it will be more than an exhibition of my work. It will also include a series of interviews, installations and a strong debate on the new means to produce Art. Lots of work but it has been fun enough and I'm doing it with great passion. This is also because I'm truly motivated to spread the validity of digital media to produce art, in a country with a strong and marked tradition of Fine Arts.
I'll travell to Coimbra soon and I'll stay there until 14th of November.





I want to thank my friends ~ManuelCarmo and ~Jullee for their great support and contribution for this project.
I also want to thank every person on this site who has ever offered me constant support, motivation and a wide range of talented work to feed my mind and visions.
Love ya!

All this said, my friends, I'll be back as soon as I return from Coimbra and I hope that the annoying bug has gone, by that time.

Wish you all a wonderful time.
See you soon!

Sad news when I logged in today:

Our dear friend and fellow deviant Greg Leborgne died recently.

a to

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8 FACTS ABOUT ME

My dear friend `MichelCh tagged me. Merci Michel.

Here are some weird compact facts about my weird compact self:

1- I'm addicted to music, coffee and (damn!! I've tried hard to give up) cigarettes. I managed to replace them by a pipe. So now I can say "I gave up cigarettes".

2- I wear black most of the times (since I was 10). More recently I painted a room in my house totally in black. Something I had never seen and I was curious about how it would be. I liked it and it remains totally black.
When I'm at home, I spend my days in this dark room I call "the combat area" or "the cave", working, drawing, painting and listening to music. For this reason and because I get so absorbed by these activities, I frequently loose the notion of time. I never know which day of the month is, never know which day of the week is...
When I have to say how old I am, I have to remember I was born in 1970.
My friends use to say I'm a hermit.

3- I like to cook and specially to eat. My favorite food is Italian and Portuguese. (I have failed in all my attempts to become a vegetarian, probably because I grew up convinced I was a damn predator).

4- I'm fascinated by Astronomy, Philosophy, Psychology and other things ending in "gy" like dark chocolate.

5- I've no religion and I'm not even an atheist. I've more a sort of agnostic posture, when I'm forced to think about it.

6- I'm never satisfied with my work. I always believe I can improve much more. I'm never really happy with it and I suppose I will never be.
There was a period of my artistic life that I believed I was so conceptual that the mere fact of putting my ideas on paper (or somewhere else where they could assume a physical form) would be pure waste of time. It was I believe my most creative period. I abandoned such idiocy some months later when I was invited to illustrate a book. Hard to convince them to pay me to illustrate with my brain mainly heh!

7- In my adolescence I was a football player (soccer) and I used to run in many national competitions. I was really fast and was invited by three great clubs in Portugal. Never joined any due to my natural alienation and my premature addiction to nicotine by the age of 14.

8- As a resume of my character (by my own evaluation, of course), I'm introverted, peaceful, calm, crazy, perfectionist, lonely, alienated, weird. Paradoxally (or maybe not) I'm very responsible, organized, professional.
I've no age (according to common standards), I've no religion, I don't identify with any political postures or ideals, I don't watch TV, I like the way I am.

Thanks for reading.

Now I'm supposed to tagg some victims. Hummm... lets see..

*svensson
~Mandarino
*Bernardumaine
~marzguy
=asclaire
=RetroZombie
*8025glome
*Andi-3d
*dcamacho
=tosetti
*drlew
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Forgive me my silent favs and the late replies ( I hate to do this) . Work has been too much since the 1st of September. I also started a new activity in a partnership with some artists and photographers. We are creating an interesting project that I'll tell you more later.
Many thanks for all the recent feedback on my work here on DA. It is greatly appreciated.

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On a different note, the poetry book "Versus Nus" by Tiago is out there. The publisher is Magna Editora. The book cover features my painting "Inner Dynamics", fact that truly honors me. The book is excellent and I recommend it to all poetry lovers.



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FAM Magazine Printed - Issue 1 Released.
Just got mine today.

For more details, check out




You can order it online here [link]




Much


Paula

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CCB - Centro cultural de Belém (Belém Cultural Center) for those who do not know, it's the largest building with cultural facilities in Portugal. Located in Lisbon, it holds the Joe Berardo Art Collection (estimated at over 316 million euros).
I visited the Berardo Collection Museum yesterday and I must say that I saw for the first time the original paintings, sculptures, interesting videos and installations of some artists that I've been admiring through the years. From Salvador Dali to Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Max Ernst, Magritte, Mario Cesariny, Paula Rego, André Masson, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon and many many more. All distributed by art movements in an area of 140,000 m². (with terrible light btw). Despite the bad light design, which causes some annoying reflexes on the pieces, it was very interesting to visit and I suggest it to anyone coming to Portugal or living here. A cool program for tourists, art aficionados and aliens like myself.

On a different note, my holidays ended, I had to update my crappy website and I've too much work in hands right now. I must prepare my show for Coimbra, a 30 minute speech for the conference there (Gah!) and I'm also involved in a variety of projects with the portuguese author Manuel Carmo, which is an amazing and renowed artist and also a great friend of mine.
Some time ago I was talking with him about the internet and the way it has been revolutionizing the arts panorama (yes we are old enough) and Manuel decided to open an account on DA, which is a great site representing this reality.



Unfortunately, but fortunately for him, he's a very busy person and he hasn't the time to come here frequently. Even though, I decided to share this with you. I truly admire his work and hopefully we will upload more of his paintings soon.

On a funny note, I was contacted by a portuguese poet who wants to use my painting "INNER DYNAMICS" for the cover of his next poetry book. This was cool! I allowed the use of my image after reading the whole book before it went to the publisher. It's great! I liked it! Will be published in October. Cool heh!

Ok! All for now.
Big warm hug. Enjoy the rest of Summer. I'll be around, despite the work.

As some of you may know I was away from DeviantArt for almost two years, coming here now and then just to pick some new favorites, to check my notes and to read some news. I am back to this amazing place and I'll stay here as long as I can. I've worked really hard these past years, I got divorced, I dedicated more time to my dogs and I rarely had the time to comment and sit here just for the pleasure of browsing art or giving some feedback to my friends. My English even got terribly worse. Bah!
On my cave, things will be calmer until November, when my next exhibition will take place. By that time I will move for a month to the north of the country and I'll have a lot of work to do there. Until that, I'm planing to upload some new stuff and also some older stuff (from the Mr. Big Eye Era). Some of my older paintings have more than one version and some of them were revised and updated in 2006. I will upload them to my gallery here on DA because they marked a time of my life and a time of learning with the digital tools. Although, they must be seen on that particular context, exclusively.

In a similar note, I'm sorry for the late comments. I had more than 5000 messages when I came back and then a DD made that number even bigger. Still a chaos in my messages and it will take some time for me to organize all that. Paula's an organizer freak!!

Thank you all for the recent feedback and friendship. I do appreciate them very, very much. Gods of cyberspace! I missed this place.





As for the print requests on some of my images, I'll try to make them available really soon.

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CHRONIC CHRONICLES:

Bolo do caco, for those who are curious not having even a shadow of an idea of what I was talking about, it's a kind of bread made in Madeira Island. A typical typical thing. One of those we eat and cry for more (and they know it, and it gets as expensive as the local bananas, and not only for tourists). Not interesting enough for a journal title but interesting enough for my stomach, in a way that I can't think of anything else right now... Please, wait five seconds. I'll be right back!


This said and done, I may proceed and I will avoid more detailed gastronomical references, even because I just came back from the kitchen and food is no longer an obssession monopolizing my brain cells.



This weekend I went to an anual event here that we call "Festa do Avante". The thing lasts for three etilic days for most people but there are some of us who start cellebrating it a week before and we "finish" it many beers later. Lots of food from all regions of the country. Many other countries and their regions are represented too having their own "houses" with their typical stuff in them. That's what we call "A cidade Internacional" meaning exactly "The international City". To give you guys an idea, the Sahara region was there having just a woman and a gas aparatus to cook on the floor. Interesting enough, I must add, even because separated by a 2mm cardboard sheet there was the Cuba's place, tremendously crowded and with a different mood this year only broken by the smell of some typical cocktails and grilled chourizos (that honestly seemed to be much more consistent). It seems I landed recently from a distant planet where The News don't exist. But I was immediatly told about the facts by very well informed indigenous. Either the man dies or we will start having dinner, I said.

Yes, it is supposed to be a political oriented party or whatever we may call it. It has almost the taste of exotism these days. The exotism of those remote things that now decorate History books to teach the youngest how a country was very very very different back in the Paleolithic. Truth is that it has been transformed into a festival with good music and good gastronomy in order to attract teens and tys from all colors and sizes. Entire families, with different ideologies and permeability to drugs and that sort of stuff. The "everything is allowed" sort of thing "and after this we will go back to normal quotidian banality". What counts it's the spirit and most people here get it during these days.

As for me, I'm more or less monochromatic but I like good music, good food and to have fun, so inevitably I'm there breathing all these kinds of art in the excellent company of more or less colourful friends. This year wasn't the exception. I went to a few concerts, from jazz to flamenco, I tried many different delicacies (both solid and liquid) from remote places in this crazy planet and I really had a great time at the AvantTheatre. so, Avante, see you next year.



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A cloud of hugs!

Mood: Blatantly Bizarre?
Listening: kraftwerk [link] and Noize Unitz [link]
Reading: about pharmacologically active ingredients of chocolate
Watching: how, despite the initial solidity, it doesn't need 2 minutes to start melting under this sun.

You're right, yes. Sorry!
Three journal entries by moi in less than a year, 2 months, 3 weeks and 4 days...
Any connection between this and the apocalypse falling on our heads is merely coincidental and purely unintentional.

Now, would you please call the militia or some superhero in strange stockings?
I was tagged again.


This time by ~LADESIGNER (Can't trust neighbours these days, heh!)
Big hug Luisa. I had to accept this ahah. Thank you, my friend.

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Welcome to my weird head, have a weird sit and enjoy your weird stay.

Paula in Weirdland presents:

WHAT MAKES ME A VERY FINE SPECIMEN OF THE WEIRDO

So, in this kind of emotional self inflicted torture and mental self abuse of my frantic neurons, I will inflict my ridiculous selfanalisys on you by making public 6 weird facts about my weird self.

Weird...
Starting by the meaning of the word "weird", me and Mr. Dictionary of Contemporary English we decided that it is a synonym for "unusual, very strange, rare".

Mmmm...
In this context, and taking my pets as a basis for comparison, excluding the possible two aspects that could not fit into the "weird" category, I had trouble making a selection here. The whole process took me almost 15 long coffee cups. Exactly before finishing the 15th I decided to use wide topics to make it easier for moi and resume them drastically to save your time and patience.


1- Shoes
Since I was a child, I take my shoes off to draw or paint.
Thanks to my mum, who was very observative and noticed it, I've been aware of this fact since I was 6.
I don't know why I tend to do this. It's a preference or a habit as many others, I guess. Although it surely deprived me of experimenting real freedom moments at public school through the years.

2 - Space for space
I've always been a "minimalism freak".
I'm an industrial/equipment designer and this may sound weird to some of you (possibly maybe) but I don't like many objects around me. This includes furniture, for instances.
Lets take my house as an example. More than 90% of the whole area has nothing else than air, particles of dust and lots of smoke, among a variety of invisible particles. I select criteriously my furniture, most of it was designed by me (and Mr. Corbusier is always welcome) and I have the less I can. So free area=95%, occupied area= 4%, variable area=1% (me, inside or outside the house, more or less mentaly active. heh! I joke).
I do love space and I hope my friends like the echo as much as me, during our conversations.


3 - Colours/Colors
I suppose I'm weird in this matter.
I've a thing for the no-colours and specially for the extremities of the grayscale. I usually wear black and white. Correction: I only use black and/or white. Can't even say I'm neutral, because this has been a long time institution and a true natural preference in what relates to clothes and other despicable stuff.
On the other hand, I'm absolutely fascinated by colours. In my paintings, most of the times I'm affraid to use them. This, I believe, is related to a great respect I have for colours and for being aware of their power. When I use them, normally it's very very intentional. Colours cause a strong impact on us, don't they? It's amazing.


4 - Food
Another long term habbit is this weird preference to eat food separatedly. I mean, to eat different things isolated.
For instances, I rarely eat meat but lets suppose there's some tasty tipical portuguese meal on the table including different kinds of meat, potatoes, rice, some green boiled vegetables and a cold salad. I would invariably start by eating all the salad, then the boiled vegetables, followed by the rice, the potatoes and finally the meat. All in a most instinctive impulse.
My mum used to say this attitude resambles a "hire purchase" and she tried hard to change it.
I know eating habbits can vary greatly from culture to culture, from country to country. Although, believe me, here in miscelaneousland it is considered weird enough.

5 - Music
I'm totally dependent on music. Nothing weird about this since my dogs like it too. Although I can listen to the same song 748748374832478932498475847 times without feeling dizzy and irreversible insane. This is quite strange I believe.
Most of my paintings, for instances, are made listening to the same composition over and over again. It is as if I changed it it would all go to hell and enter a totally strange and different ambiance. I remain in some sort of crazy trance over a particular song and it just let it flow until I "feel like".
When I'm not home?
Well, I take my mp3 player et voilá. Can't live without music. Seriously.
I've also a thing for guitars. Electric, classic guitars and (surprise surprise) the portuguese guitar which is an unique intrument with a very particular sound. My grandfather mastered it so I blame the genes for this cronical weirdness.


6 - Boats
I've a passion for the sea and I couldn't stand being far away from the ocean. I would be assaulted by some sort of sea-deprivation syndrome It's more a kind of addition. One more.
More secrete though has been my long time dream to live on a boat.
Weird? I'm not sure but it seems there are not many people in Western countries living that way. So I thought it fits into the "weird" list.
I would love to live on a boat. That's a weird fact. And I'll try to make it possible some time in the future, many many euros from today.


Thank you very much for taking the time to read this weird stuff.
Now repeat after moi a 100 times:

"being weird is ok"
"being weird is ok"
"being weird is ok"
...

and we'll all feel better.



Avalanche of hugz!



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^{more crazy stuff:}

Hello Hello crazy wonderful people.

Mood: green lenses
Listening to: Kraftwerk
Watching: L'Aventure, c'est L'Aventure

Was a crazy but nice week. You?

The weather is not perfect yet and tobacco got more expensive... AGAIN! Nice time to stop smoking... the most expensive brands.


Had to change my "current age" because a lot of people told me it was my birthday, the other day. So, as they were a majority, all in accordance and such, I believed I'm 16 now. Sorry, I meant 36.

Age...
When I think about this I always feel strange about it. I really don't think about age, unless when I have to write it somewhere or so.
I believe it's a good sign, otherwise I would be complaining about artritis reumatoid already and... who is Mr. Alzeimher btw?
Listening to someone yesterday, I heard some interesting point of view about this. "Age", he said, "is the most relative issue. We usually call "old people" to those who have more than 10 years and "young" to those who have less 10 years than we have. In fact, I remember, when I was 9, a person in his/her twenties was really really really old. I look back now and those are kids enjoying the Spring of life. Funny as it is, age is just a crazy thing to think about during Spring. Better dream about dark chocolate and there's a lot of Metaphysicis in it.

On a similar note, I've had some extra time to dedicate to DA and I've been uploading a lot of scraps. I just realized I've more scraps than deviations in my gallery. I just joined the club of "that's my dog, I was bored", more or less, and uploaded my dog's face in black and white, among some old vector work in the form of cartoons. Maybe I'll put some more vectors soon and some fractal experiences.


So, what's for dinner tonight?

Hope you guys have been feeling great.
Big hugz!



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^{more crazy stuff:}

Hello Hello crazy wonderful people.
Massive hug thing.

Mood: Delaying my secular visit to the hairdresser, as usual
Listening: Arf! Arf! by my dog and some Cure during the breaks.
Reading: Fado Alexandrino by Antonio Lobo Antunes.


Could anyone tell me where have I been these days?

It's a fact that I don't watch that much TV, except for a few channels that I accidently turn on from time to time. The normal procedure is: I go like "Oooops! Damn cables! Here I am, stumbling again on this amazonic forest of black rubber things. Clumsy me! Arrrrgh...".Then I usually fall down, grab some solid platform to minimize the consequencies and quite accidentaly touch the ON button of my TV (which is a very consistent platform and it's strategically there at the corner of my office, being a nice playground for spiders and other acrobatic insects, including some public figures). The device starts immediatly emiting a strident noise that I have this curious natural impulse to stop, usually for great pleasure of my neurons and ears.
Being almost a TV abstemic, I feel quite alienated these days. Am I missing something important?

Today I met some friends at the bar and it had been a while since I had some nice time to sit drinking mountains of coffee, smoking more than any industrial chamney without filters and doing absolutely nothing (else). I've been basicaly alone (except for the great company of my two dogs, in a kind of intentional retirement). So I said to myself "Lets meet some good old friends belonging to the human species, for a change". I did so and most people had already thought I had moved to some distant island.

You know, we the portuguese have the culture of the "cafe". We can sit for hours at a cafe table, in a group of friends or alone, drinking a "bica" (very strong expresso coffee, measured in drops of pure cafeine. The stronger, the better and lets hope we won't get an eternal insomnia). You know, warm sunny evenings, long time, long conversations about almost everything, from inflation to the lastest football match, passing throught the characteristics of c