Paulo Silva has worked for 30 years in the area of gender based work. His drawings and paintings relate to notions such as personal and sexual identity, as well as issues of spirituality... The representation of the male is a central point in his work. Notions of masculinity are raised and questioned through Paulo's work, in the search for the soul within the man. Sometimes that takes him into confronting himself with issues of what is and isn't socially acceptable. His work comes from a basis of traditional figurative drawing and painting, suffering formal alterations towards expressionism as Paulo finds his way through different meanings and ways of seeing masculinity. Paulo's work is the result of direct experience and not from surrealist notions. His drawings and paintings start off from an outward stance and go on suffering alterations, conveying different layers of meaning and in doing so, going deeper into what is unseen. This is done in a highly personal, subjective manner. In the works presented here, the initial material used is graphite, developing into varied materials such as charcoal, soft pastel, oil pastel and pencil. Some aspects of Paulo's work are highly finished, others are no more than a rough cartoon, others still combine both aspects in order to better convey their meaning. Paulo works as on a full-time basis as an art teacher and lectures on issues that are essential to the understanding of the relationship between technical/formal aspects of art and aesthetics. … Read More