all images by Luis Branco

I have just come home from Portugal. This was perhaps my best trip yet. I went with a more open agenda and came back with a large body of works in collaboration with Luis Branco as well as preliminary sketches and ideas for my own abstract drawings. Luis and I have at least 4 major photographic series “about water” – in the Rio Sever, in a pristine mountain lake, in the Pego do Sino and in a dry lake near Santa Susana that has suffered the extreme weather of this year in the Alentejo.

We have thousands of images to sort through and choose. Luis still wants to make different “corrections” to the chosen images. I am showing here just a few from our shoot in the Pego do Sino, a ravine or canyon near the Obras Artist Residencies. We worked here last year in the rocks above but this year we wanted to investigate this deep ravine that is not met by many human beings. There are many myths about the pego – of the deusa (goddess) that captures men in her deep waters, of holy men and women who have ventured into this site and emerged changed forever. These stories add to the drama, but really it is just a beautiful and mysterious place.

Thanks again to the wonderful support of the Obras Artist Residency, and all the dear friends I have made in Portugal.