Santídio Pereira: Fertile Landscapes

Descriptions of the Brazilian Northeast dwell on the high temperatures and scant rainfall. Still, Pereira remembers Curral Comprido, in the municipality of Isaías Coelho, where he was born, as a place where it rained heavily, especially in wintertime. 

During this season, the landscape is swathed in a carpet of rose Natal grass (capim-do-pendão-rosa, as it is known in the region), a species originating in southern Africa, its scientific name being Melinis repens.

This circular patch of grass, resembling a gigantic navel, suggests the cyclical nature of life. Grass marks the onset of a cycle of birth, growth, and renewal. It is the first stage in a food chain that transfers energy through different species.  The artist’s memories not only appear in his drawings but take concrete shape in the form of a patch of grass laid out in the exhibition space. Grass, as a sort of world originator, is an indication of life. 

Pereira, on the other hand, draws attention to the great diversity of the caatinga—its uplands and depressions, flatlands and fords. He focuses on the bountifulness of the region, rather than on its supposedly barren soil. Nor does he follow Candido Portinari in depicting the migrants fleeing to big cities from drought in the Northeast as edifying figures who could teach us much about society and humanity from the adversity they have been forced to confront. 

Pereira’s work reflects this extraordinary vitality, belying the stereotypical depiction of Piauí as arid and inhospitable by portraying it as a pleasurable place full of joy and vibrant color.

They float, not like ideas, but as if they transcended geographical and meteorological circumstances. Fulsome and exuberant images are summoned up from memory, often depicting the season when plants begin to flower. These images do not, however, like still lifes, reflect the ephemeral nature of life, but laud the vital energy of vegetation.

In his creative process, references to specific species of plant visible in his surroundings are not opposed to imagination, or, rather, to the formation of a mental image of something that is not present. It is as if Pereira were interpreting what he has seen and what he remembers, but differently, with a fresh eye, which transcends both the original occurrence and the recollection of it.

In his landscape prints, Pereira not only employs traditional printing tools, such as a gouge, to make incisions in the wood or chipboard, but he also elects to use carpentry techniques, especially for the cutting and fitting of wood during the printing process. This makes it possible to create an enormous range of variations and combinations. 

The lines that appear between the two plates mark the points where they meet, and not exactly the incision in the wood. A white outline is created by the casing—the part that remains untouched by ink. Drawing here does not involve a gesture or a movement of the hand; the line is more of an approximation, a best fit, a dialogue with things that lie nearby. The line stakes out a distance but, at the same time, brings together a variety of tones. 

Pereira thus remains true to his origins in the state of Piauí and also to the tradition of modern painting and printmaking, in producing images of fertile landscapes and fecund horizons.