Theo Pinto, painting light to feel present and reach a state of clarity, presence, and connection.
Brazilian-born artist Theo Pinto (1990), who is based in New York and was trained in architecture and design, has never lost his fascination with scale and proportion, or with the kind of experience that can emerge from looking at an image or a project for an extended period of time. In his paintings, the rational dimension merges with an ongoing search for what he calls ‘inner light’: a spiritual dimension that emerges in transitional states of light, such as dusk and sunrise, and the gradual fading of day into night — moments when the atmosphere feels unstable and constantly changing. Spiritual, as we said, but not to be confused with anything religious or symbolic in the traditional sense.
For Pinto, light is something to be represented precisely in its unstable, intangible, and unpossessable nature. «My work comes from a distance I haven’t yet been able to bridge: the distance between the state I live in and the one I’m searching for. Painting has become a way of slowing things down», he said. And so, the matte surface of the canvas absorbs, rather than reflects, the light of a sky or landscape, creating, layer by layer, expanses of color that progressively move away from their original reference. «Earlier in my career I held onto those references much more closely. Now I’m much more interested in allowing the painting to evolve on its own. Some of my favorite moments happen when it begins telling me something I wasn’t expecting». It was precisely this journey—and this process—that I wanted to understand more deeply. Our conversation coincided with the closing of his solo exhibition, The Weight of Light, at Cadogan Gallery in London.
