Arvore gallery | Porto, Portugal
This exhibition, Reminiscences, is a collection of my most recent oil paintings. It is an invitation into my quietest observations—a visual meditation on how a moment, once passed, continues to glow within us as memory.
For this body of work, I've focused on a single, unfolding question: How do we paint not what we see, but what remains after we close our eyes?
The answer unfolds in two complementary series.
The first begins in the observed world. In paintings like Golden Land and Breeze is Coming, I've tried to hold the very instant light changes or the air shifts—that fragile threshold just before something becomes memory. These works are my act of bearing witness, where each brushstroke is a deliberate record of presence.
The second series, including Abstract n.1 and Abstract n.2, moves inward. These are the echoes. By letting go of landscape, I aim to paint the residue of the moment itself: its atmosphere, its emotional weight, its color in the mind's eye. They are not places, but the feeling of having been present.
My entire practice is a dialogue between these two realms: the external world that stirs us, and the quiet interior space where the feeling lingers. I see myself as a vessel between them. I work with oil because of its inherent light and depth—its ability to blend, layer, and softly hold time.
Reminiscences is, in many ways, my most personal exploration of this idea. It is about the beauty and melancholy of transience, and the human desire to give a gentle, permanent form to what is inherently fleeting.
I hope these paintings offer you a space to pause, to feel your own memories resonate, and to witness, with me, the world as it slips quietly into light.
— Lana Nobrega
