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Beatriz SANTOS

Beatriz Santos is a London-based emerging artist who explores the relationship between poetic words and images.

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June 2022

Beatriz's practice is centred on the effort of translating poetic fragments into visual compositions.

Artist profile

Artwork

Beatriz's practice is centred on the effort of translating poetic fragments into visual compositions. By engaging with eclectic poetic metaphors and images, her work shows contrasting, inter-locking scenes that can be read as cyphers for internal moods, desires and fears.

Having studied English at the University of Cambridge and Art History at the Courtauld. She completed the Slade summer foundation course in 2019, and is going to return to the Slade later this year to complete a Painting MA.

Beatriz approaches image-making by highlighting the dissonance between words, images and feelings. Recently, she has been exploring how to enhance the expressivity of her work by developing a multi-media approach, blending acrylics, water-soluble pencils, and different coloured supports. Working between painting and drawing, she is experimenting to create a new language, constantly moving between wet and dry ways of working.

Beatriz depicts states of connection, fragility and reverie through dreaming or embracing figures. "I try to question whether painting is merely a form of self-consolation, or whether it can constitute a system for interrogating feelings of helplessness. I like thinking of words as seeds, spawning countless images and puzzles for viewers to interpret." 

In The Garden, presented above, Beatriz tried to capture the essence of Andrew Marvell’s poem, in which the speaker turns away from the public spheres of power and achievement (a modern day version would involve turning one’s phone on flight mode) and takes a refreshing nap in a summer garden. Marvell depicts a luscious and outrageously sensual garden, where ‘The nectarine and curious peach/ Into my hands themselves do reach;’. The drawing is not an illustration of Marvell’s poem, but a point of departure. She sensitively  captures the jewel-like colours of the fruits and the shady repose he describes, and conveys this moment of peaceful abandon. "I made the figure’s breasts look like nectarines, and on the left in the background are reeds which are in fact the nymph Syrinx in disguise that Marvell mentions."


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