LECTOURE
La Dépêche - H. Masarotti, correspondent
and novelist - 7 August 2004
 « After discovering "L'Eté Photographique",
Anna Dos Santos displays some twenty paintings in the exhibition gallery of
the Tourist Office in Lectoure from 1 August until 15 August 2004. This artist
from Toulouse has dedicated the last ten years to painting even though she had
already expressed her taste for this art as a child therefore dedicating her
studies to this project.
She has taken part in several exhibitions and shared her knowledge with young
people while teaching Plastic Arts in several secondary schools.
Anna has undergone various periods of expression and she keeps evolving as she
constantly seeks new ways of expressing her feelings and emotions. Starting
most of the time from a collage, she then uses several techniques to cover her
canvas, generally in the etching style. There is a whole series of colours whose
composition for the observer might be reminiscent of either various scenes or
landscapes for the observer. The artist has currently deliberately chosen to
limit herself to rather warm colours, from earth colours to ochres, browns,
blacks and whites.
From her recent travels to Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt... from her discovery
of arid lands, she has developed a taste for « working on spaces and colours,
the frontier between the earth and the sky, atmospheres and movements »,
she emphasizes while nodding at a series of paintings entitled Désertude. She
says what starts a painting may be a colour, an emotion, a collage that will
be enriched and completed by her inspiration, seeking for a balance of tones
and forms, a vertical or oblique composition. The whole work is performed inside
her studio from sensations experienced oudoors somewhere else in remote places.
Some time ago, she favoured blues and greens. She has also worked on the colours
of walls which gradually deteriorate, oxydations which testify to the passing
of time, a fascinating notion for her.
Paper pasted on the canvas, whether it bears some writing or not, adds to her
paintings, she says, "an obvious element of time which has an altogether
cultural, symbolic and aesthetic value".
You should not miss the most beautiful paintings in this extraordinary exhibition.
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