The artist
Ana Soares
Born in Lisbon, at home in Caldas da Rainha. She has always drawn, and has never stopped looking at nature the way one looks at a palette.
Ana Soares was born in Lisbon in 1962 and has lived in Caldas da Rainha, in central Portugal, for more than thirty years. A physical education teacher by profession, she never stopped drawing. What began as a lifelong love has, over the years, become a daily practice to which she devotes all her free time.
Her work is born of observation. It is in the colours of nature, in the way they meet, overlap and cross, that she finds her material. Working in coloured pencil, she builds each image in layers, searching for the right tone and the detail that brings a feather, a gaze or a leaf to life.
Birds hold a special place. Some are real, others invented, and all of them carry colours that nature suggests and the hand takes a little further. Alongside them come foxes, squirrels, cats and small characters who climb trees and talk to mice, stories told without words.
Restless by nature, she loves working with her hands: she sews, tends the land, practises yoga, draws and paints. In everything she does she looks for attention, patience and the pleasure of watching something grow slowly.
Chromatic fusion leads to the perfect balance between the firm line of the pencil and the transparency of colour.
To find out more about a work, a commission or an illustration, write to her.