Isabel Fiadeiro’s portraits of Africa

Left: A painting from Isabel’s exhibit. Right: A page from her sketchbook.

Interview by Gabi Campanario

When Portuguese artist Isabel Fiadeiro is not documenting life in West African countries on her sketchbook, she works on larger paintings that offer another window into the soul of people she comes across in her life. Today, an exhibit of her paintings opens at Centre Culturel Français in Nouackchot, the city she calls home since 2003. Since most of us can’t be there to meet Isabel and admire her work first hand, I took the opportunity to ask her about the exhibit and learn more about her art. Isabel has lived in Mauritania since 2003 and runs an art gallery where she promotes local artists. I’m always inspired by the human dimension of her art and its powerful visual storytelling.

What role does sketching play in your work as a painter? Are your sketches the basis for your paintings?It’s rare that I use any of my sketches as a departure point for a painting. I see my sketchbooks as an end in themselves, they work as visual journals of the interest I have in my surroundings. I do a lot of portrait sketches and enter in close relation through the drawings with people I had not know just a few minutes before. On the other hand my portrait paintings are becoming more and more like sketches, unfinished, where the whole process of work, can be seen and doesn’t get covered by the last layers of paint.

The sketches work also as a tool to develop my skills. A year after I started sketching, a look at my first sketchbook made me realize how my drawing had improved. I still get days where sketching will just flow and others where it seems to be a struggle. As a figurative painter I find that sketching is essential in your practice and some times I wish I had started earlier.

Touareg artisans in Mali

What are your tools and favorite subjects?

On my sketchbooks I rather use pilot G-TEC- C4, a great pen with a 0.4 nib and a small watercolor box. If I have the time I rather work directly with a thin brush in watercolor. I found the Japanese water brushes last year when I visited Lisbon and they’re now part of my sketching gear.

For my paintings I have been using mainly acrylics as my studio is in my flat and the smells of turpentine and oils it’s too strong for me to live with. I use paper most of the time as a support.

My favorite subject is the human being. I love sketching people at work or at leisure or actually posing. In Mauritania I started landscape paintings, there’s something in the desert landscape that’s special and makes you aware of how insignificant one is.

A Mauritanian landscape

What’s your experience urban sketching with local artists in Nouakchott?

The first time only five of us got together and some other artists showed up as we were finishing the session. Sidi Yahyia, a first generation painter had brought little stools from his ”painting school for children” and we drew around our neighborhood that is a very quiet place. For the next sketchcrawl, we opened it up to the public and, in a extremely hot day with a sand storm going on, I was surprise to see all artists joining in and plenty of young couples with children. The fishing harbor was a great location choice as it was the coolest place in Nouakchott. I only regret not haven taken extra paper and pencils for the young boys in the harbor beach that wanted to join us.

Drawing with others opens up new ways of approaching the subject, new techniques and sharing of information plus the little extra opportunity to held someone else sketches in your hand at the end of the day it also helps develop your critique sense.

Tell us a little bit about the exhibit, what will you be showing, is there a theme?

I’m presenting 15 portraits on kraft paper. Full figures, three quarters or just the faces. From young children to old men and women. They’re all people I know that come from a humble background and that represent the larger specter of the Mauritanian society. All of them face the viewer, questioning them.

Links

• Isabel’s blog.

• Isabel’s art on flickr.