Welcome to Jeriel's portfolio
Paddling and fishing on the amazon river
Jeriel - 2018
Acrylic on canvas
110,00 cm height x 80,00cm width x 4,00 cm depth
USD 1.740,00
What you see is what you pay: freight is included in the price of the works stated above
You will receive this work rolled up in a strong tube. Any picture framer in your vicinity will stretch it again on a frame.
7-day guarantee for return of your money
Delivery period: 20 to 25 days to any country outside Brazil
The work of art is sent directly from the artist’s studio in Brazil to your home
Product code: 14317
THE ARTIST
Jeriel
While the world watches documentaries about the importance of preserving the Amazon rainforest, far from understanding what it means to live this reality at close quarters – which not even we Brazilians succeed in expressing, an artist born among the privileges provided by nature in this region brings us slices and views of this reality, in the form of his “poetry in painting”.
The subject is life beside the river, not only portrayed but interpreted in all its plural, cultural and ethnic wealth, with abundant fauna and flora and its predominantly indigenous people. Brazil offers the world this specific art, which can only be created here because its inspiration and influence are in these lands, these waters, their inspiring racial mixes, their regional folklore, habits and customs.
Jeriel de Souza dos Santos works with painting, drawing, prints, and as an illustrator. Born in Macapá, in the state of Amapá, he recalls that in his infancy he heard many stories told by his mother, Maria José – a woman who lived by the river, with little education. The stories fascinated him, and influenced his first rough drawings, in which he expressed the strength of the Amazon forest and its often mixed-race people. These people are makers of canoes, fishermen, people whose families wash their clothes in the Amazon river, and its creeks and tributaries – and it was among them that he grew up and built his artistic language, in an unending quest through historical and cultural researches based on his origins.
In his academic studies and artistic experiments, he discovered a singular affinity with Pop Art, which comes from his identification, above all, with the colors and the figurative expression of that genre. However, it is also grounded on other artistic genres, such as: Cubism, in its use of figures broken up and separated by drawn lines; fauvism, in its simplification of forms; and Orphism, a movement in French painting of around 1912, under the influence of Cubism – all these together impress a more spiritual character on the codes he uses.
The addition of these main artistic influences to the memories of his mother’s wisdom led him to create a personal identity for his work. In this mainly self-created artistic style, which Jeriel calls Tucuju Pop Art, he grounds his work firmly on the Brazilian-regional quality of his state, and the result is a consciousness about memory, knowledge and perception, which remains consistent with the particular aesthetics of the Pop Art genre.
The day-to-day scenes that Jeriel represents express forms and colors of an aesthetic based on regional art, full of simplicity, but at the same time rich in authenticity and in engagement with the positioning of the Tucuju people and their multicultural references.
The visual poetics of his work take us through a pantheon of imagination about the Brazilian Amazon. Through the artist’s eye we find, in his works, the strength of the batuque, the dance of Marabaixo, the life of those who live by the Amazon River, of the caboclos of Brazil’s north, the life of the rivers and creeks, the Fort of São José de Macapá, and even the ‘Zero monument’ at the equator where it passes through the state.
Jeriel’s artistic career began at age 15, when he joined the Cândido Portinari Free Arts course in 1994. In 2012 he received his degree in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Amapá (UniFap), where he is now a lecturer. When at university, he was already developing studies and experiments in his painting and a technique of composition of colors that took into account the climate of the Amazon.
“I think it’s fundamental for every artist to be present in his time and space,” he says. His artistic career of innumerable solo and group exhibitions led up to the launch, in 2013, of his exhibition Tucuju Pop Art, which toured several cities of the state of Amapá, and was also held in Rio de Janeiro. In 2018, his work was in two international group exhibitions in Paris and Lisbon.
His works overflow with colors, lines, narratives and themes, which not only delight the eye but also express the pride of being a mixed-race people, rich in material and intangible wealth and heritage, plurality and so many other things that make us, Brazilians, not better, necessarily, but singular and grandiose.
When asked about his role in the universe of arts, Jeriel reflects: “The artist is the essence of his day-to-day context, and the strength of his culture.”
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