Paisagem Mayor 2009

Pedro Calapez made this collection of paintings called Paisagem Mayor, meaning ‘Major Landscape’ in Portuguese, with paint on canvas. What strikes me about this piece is how Calapez sees the act of painting itself as a landscape. Each panel is like a little world, a separate vista, but they talk to each other, right? I love the way he lets the paint be itself, you know? It's not trying to trick you into thinking it's something else. It's just paint, doing its thing. Take the bright pink panel near the bottom, for example. You can see the strokes, the way he dragged the brush across the surface. It's not blended or smoothed out. It’s raw, immediate. And the colors! They're not realistic, but they feel true. It reminds me of Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series, but with a Latin twist, all hot and bothered. It feels alive, like a conversation that's just getting started.