Brigitte von Humboldt’s world starts through a decorative wrought-iron garden gate set back from the sea. It leads down a winding path through rampant foliage and trees, and opens up into a light-filled studio.
This is just the perfect setting for an artist. We find her among her paint pots and canvases, working intently on a huge explosion of colour, the sound of music in the background.
Brigitte’s work is joyous and invariably reflects Nature.
All around her paintings shine – exuberance at its peak, with lots of vivid blues, pinks and reds. In contrast, the artist is quiet.
“I think maybe I am a little bit dull”, she muses. “I do not speak much, but I am a good listener, and I hear a lot when people speak”.
It is quite impossible to imagine that anyone who could create such happy paintings could be dull – so we persevere and discover that Brigitte is anything but.
She arrived in Portugal in 1979, and fell in love with “the love, the light, the feeling of freedom” here. In those days Portugal was a very different country. Much ‘smaller’, more intimate and basic. “I knew the faces of everyone I met in the street”, she recalls.
It was a gentle, simple time. The locals called her “Piriquita” (like the budgerigar) because they could not pronounce the German ‘Brigitte’. As a consequence, she named her house “Casa Piriquita”.
So much has ‘moved on’, sadly, since those early days, but Brigitte’s work has blossomed. It is largely abstract with touches of realism, and every now and then, she craves the discipline of figurative expression and produces a much more controlled composition.
“You must do everything as an artist”, she explains. “If not you don’t feel complete. Both the abstract and the figurative are necessary to train yourself. Each discipline can bring forward the other”.
Classically trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz, in her native Germany, Brigitte took her degree in Art and Art Education.
She likes to travel as much as possible.
Travels through South America, southern India and Morocco have already inspired various series’ of paintings. Her last big single exhibition was in Brazil , on invitation from the state Ceará. She is currently working on a new theme of trees.
The day we arrived, she was putting finishing touches to a large canvas depicting a sacred Indian Neem tree.
Where to next? In painting terms, the answer is easy. “I would like to be able to plan, but really that doesn’t work, as then you are not open anymore. My challenge is simply to develop, and I feel that my paintings are getting better. The best way, I find, is not to want anything. Then it comes”.
In terms of the next travel destination, Brigitte is thinking Australia or northern India.
It all depends on what the future holds. The best way, probably, will be “not to want anything” and then it will come…
For details of Brigitte’s exhibitions, watch our events section. There will be a show at EMARP in Portimão in August, as well as a collective exhibition in Lagos with the Algarve Artists Association. In June, Brigitte will also be taking part in Arte Algarve’s next Open VIII.
Written by Natasha Donn
