Meet Silvia Pintosouza

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Silvia Pintosouza a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Silvia, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

When you are an artist and have worked with art all your life, creativity becomes part of it, just like breathing, like walking. You do not keep it alive, it is always living inside you. Your eyes become the tool that recognizes in objects, places and creatures around you the great potential for creating a work of art. There is no effort, ideas come to you constantly, you just have to have your eyes open to recognize that potential.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am from the south, from the ‘deep’ south. I was born in Bucaramanga, the capital of a state called Santander in Colombia. It was known as ‘The Beautiful City’, because it was. Time has changed it into a busy city full of high rises of offices and condos and very busy, noisy streets. I guess that is the future of all cities. I went to a school called ‘Colegio Panamericano’ -colegio means school- which was actually created by a group of parents who decided it was necessary and important to have a bilingual school in the city. There were none at the time. They ‘imported’ an American Principal and some American teachers. It was a different and exciting experience since we started taking some of our subjects in English. We also started an exchange program with Winston-Salem, NC, where I ended up living for 8 months with a much loving family with whom I still have close contact. That was my first experience living in the USA. My last two years of high school I did in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, at the Anglo Colombian School, a British school quite different from my previous one, with different rules and ways. But I enjoyed the experience very much. I ended up going to London afterwards to pursue my art career.
Art was strong in my life from the beginning. When I was a child, my siblings and I would do our school homework on a big table in the studio where my mother worked. She was an artist, an oil painter, and she had her easel, paint tubes, brushes and art tools in that studio. My grandfather became a world traveler after he retired, and so he used to send her art books from the museums he visited in Europe so she could copy the great masters. That is how she first learned to paint. I had total and free access to those books, and they also taught me about those masters and their time in history. My first artistic steps were at that table next to my mother’s easel; I would draw while she painted. My mother painted until the last months of her life. She got a Gold Medal at the Florence Biennale in Italy, just 2 months before she died. She was living in Florence with Aldo, her Italian husband of 25 years who also became her manager and most fervent admirer of her work.
My mother was the most ardent motivator when it came to me pursuing my art career. I followed her enthusiasm and ended up going to England. Why England? Well, I spoke the language, and I had graduated from a British school, so I felt ‘prepared’ for the experience. Not so… It took me several years to feel I was well adapted to the place. It was far, far away from home in many, many ways. In London I went to the Byam Shaw School of Art & Design (This school ended up merging with Central Saint Martin’s School of Art years later), did a photo printing course at the Slade School of Art at University College London. One day at this very college I met a Brazilian guy whom I ended up marrying just three months later. We are still together and still talking to each other… Like the song says, he became the ‘wind under my wings’, helping me with all aspects of my art except painting. We moved to Brazil after he finished his PhD in engineering. In Rio de Janeiro I learned more printing techniques like lithography and etching at the PUC University of Rio de Janeiro where my husband was a professor. After a few years we moved to Houston, and it was here in Houston, a city I love dearly, that I established myself as an artist.
Houston is a melting pot of people and customs, and that makes it very rich in the arts: Fine arts, dance, music, culinary arts. We have some of the best museums in the country, not only bringing fabulous exhibitions from the USA but from all over the world. As an artist I feel very much at home here.
Regarding my work, I consider myself a painter of Contemporary Realism. I am visually stimulated by images with strong potential to become works of art by their rich color, by a bold contrast between light and shadow, a geometrical and spatial composition, or a variety of textures. I can say that I am eclectic, which according to the dictionary is ‘a person who derives ideas, style or taste for a broad and diverse range of sources’. That’s me! The great variety of themes in my work is the result of observations and data recorded not only in trips, but also in daily life experiences. A simple morning walk can offer me with several ideas for paintings: It can be the changes of color and shapes on a sidewalk or street pavement, the falling leaves in autumn, reflections on windows in high-rises… Anything that stands out is a good source. Acrylic is my favorite medium because since it is water-based, it gives me the freedom to stretch the properties of the paint to the limits. It allows me to work with countless washes of very thin diluted paint, building up in this manner the different values of color and tones: Strong, dark, or light and vibrant, which allow me to push dark areas to the background and light ones to the front in various layers. Also, the use of collage and textures is an important means of creating diverse surfaces on the canvas, which become the base of my paintings. I like for my collectors to see evolution and growth in my work and to recognize quality and dedication in the paintings they take home with them.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I believe resilience is what keeps you going when you want to achieve your goals. Also a good amount of discipline to help you make a better use of your resources and time, and an open heart to help you connect and learn from those around you.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

Sometimes I ask myself whatever happened to the concept of “Art for the sake of Art”. I remember when the word Art brought mostly pleasant thoughts to one’s mind. It seems that today that concept in many art circles is fading away, it’s being forgotten and, I dare say, even ignored. So I need to constantly remind myself of what type of message I want to bring with my work: I consider myself one of those artists who still believe in giving pleasure to the senses with the sight of an image that brings comfort to the soul. I paint what I love, what makes my senses vibrate, no matter how complex a source or how simple. It can be a roof, a plant, a shadow, a leaf, a flower, a fruit, a landscape… My work doesn’t need to carry any political or social message. We already have enough of that in the news and social media daily. If I can brighten a person’s heart with an image I created, then I have accomplished my goal. The famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero once said: ‘The true objective in Art is the pursuit of happiness, but the world seems to have forgotten about it.’ I totally agree with him, and so I will definitely continue with ‘the pursuit of happiness’ in my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sps-art.com