At Sylvia Philips Primary School, with my Teacher Teresa - of great authority and kind soul at the same time( which for this subject does not matter , but couldn’t resist to mention) - we made many copies. The objective were simple and clear: to create familiarity with words and syntax rules, prevent errors, create routines and writing rhythm, and improve calligraphy.
Today, speaking particularly about painting, just one of the techniques of the rich multimedia universe that today opens horizons in the world of Art, I still feel that small boy with the glasses badly adjusted in the middle of the nose.
In front of a linguistic instrument that I admire, when I want to try or learn something, I start precisely with the copy. I learn something else and then I'm going to try something totally different.
Art is precisely this space of innovation and transgression, where one thing does not necessarily lead to another, but the fact that I have begun to learn something gives me exactly all the confidence and security I need to experience totally different things.
But today, what I leave here are exercises. These copies and interpretations in which I train calligraphy, in which I praise and tribute to the Masters, only to remember that art does not live frozen in the past, before intervenes and polarizes the present, opening horizons for the future.
Nuno Quaresma,
https://www.behance.net/NunoQuaresma