Can you imagine being able to keep your memories like this?
“Ask me whatever you want about my illustrations, and if you are (or at any time will be) in Lisbon, we can share a Nativity cake and draw together ”, Ana replies to my first email. When, in the next email, I tell him that I love Lisbon she reiterates: “The invitation is always open ! When you come, tell me, please, and we'll draw and eat at some secret and delicious corners ”.
I have been doing this for a long time, and I can assure you that it is not normal that someone you interview and who doesn't know you at all invites you to spend an afternoon with her so effusively . But that is the spirit of Ana: warm, kind, welcoming, just like the snapshots that she collects at the stroke of a line and that have earned her the favor of almost 30,000 followers On Instagram.
“Everything inspires me: a hidden mosque in Bosnia, a boat in a small Mediterranean village, the sunset in Rio de Janeiro, an art lesson with Francis Bacon at the Tate Britain...” The list goes on and on, and in the end, he summarizes: “I still I have a lot of world left to draw ”.
Still, the portion that she has already portrayed is immense, and soon, her profile will be filled with new strokes from China and Italy, her next destinations. “It's a question I love to ask myself and others: Where will I do my next drawings? Where should I go to draw?” she replies, amused.
However, the reason why she illustrates is clear to her: “For the pure pleasure that I extract from the moment, mainly. I started to draw since my first trip because I am interested in taking home something of what I have seen, tasted and felt. With time and calm, without taking any snapshots. Drawing requires patience and dedication towards what we observe and experience. That is what i like the most: devote that time to what I am living. It is my way of feeling that place, of understanding it and fall in love with him ”.
However, despite the fact that she loves discovering new destinations, many of her illustrations of her they portray her country, and more specifically, Lisbon, where she lives: “ the world impresses me and everywhere there are stories that deserve to be told in my notebook. Every detail fascinates me but our heart always belongs to our house. And, in my case, the address of that house is Portugal ”, explains the artist.
Ana also likes to complement her watercolors with small notes that explain what she felt while she was drawing, or what flavors she experienced, so that she can add more sensations to her color memory. They are very small and reading them from the screen is almost impossible, so we will have to make do with the delicious literary excerpts that she adds to her captures and that are usually related to the place she travels to.
Now, for example, she is in Cantabria and the verses that she has chosen to accompany her watercolors are those of Amalie Baptista: “It did not matter the sweat, the thirst, the steps / increasingly tired and clumsy. / And it didn't matter if the journey / was one way or return (...) ”