A(DORA)TION OF THE MAGIC OF FORM AND COLOUR

Dora Barao, a newcomer to the world of the plastic arts, is a Scorpio born November 11, 1960 in the town of Ponta Delgada on the Island of São Miguel in the Azores. In July 1972, at age 11 Dora immigrates to Canada with her family, impelled, as were many others, to seek out a better future in the New World and escape the economic hardships that assailed the islands at the time. Dora and her family chose Canada where they had relatives in both Toronto and Montreal. but is in the latter city they finally choose to settle.

Immediately after her arrival in Montreal, Dora started attending the Jean Jacques Olier Primary School, a francophone establishment. She pursued her studies and after completing a college degree in Economy and Accounting, went to work for the Laurentian bank, where today 23 years later, she supervises Sales Management for six branches. Her job is extremely demanding and Dora starts to look at art as means of relaxation and a space where she can be more at one with herself. "I was looking for an activity to relax." Dora tells us, "When I paint I forget everything…"

Dora had been a habitue at art galleries in and around Montreal for several years. Painting had always fascinated her and, in more recent years, she has seen it start to develop within her own Portuguese Community of Montreal. Lusitanian art exhibitions in the regions then followed, although still in an embryonic stage. When she saw the work of her fellow country-men, Dora started to feel the calling to painting within her own person, and progressively started to challenge herself to one day come to master this form of expression.

Finally, approximately four years ago, she met the Portuguese artist, Mercês Resendes dos Reis, who, round about that time, launches a painting course at the Casa dos Açores in Montreal, and which Dora joins. The course commenced in 2000 with a duration of two and half years. The syllabus initially included some free hand drawing but centred mostly on oil painting, that is, still life, flowers and landscape. The last modules were more geared toward perfecting and developing the student's own style. Very early on in the course Dora discovered she inclined towards painting flowers, landscapes, the stone houses of the Azores and the white house of the Algarve and Alentejo with their colourful eaves.

Although during the course Dora had allowed Dora to venture into the abstract, she prefers realism and, as she was encouraged to do by her mentor, she looks for the themes of her imaginary or in photographs that awaken her creativity.

She first showcased her work at three collective end-of-year exhibitions of Merces dos Reis' students held at the Casa dos Açores in Montreal. For the Montreal Portuguese Community cultural events of this nature were indeed innovative and unusual, as the Portuguese artists in the city had had to look for tutoring outside their community among the Canadian painters of Montreal. Since its first edition three years ago, the annual art exhibition at the Casa dos Açores has met with enormous success within the Portuguese community of Montreal.

Dora went on to tell us about the personal satisfaction and fulfillment she felt when she became aware, in a tangible and visible form upon a canvas, even when still a student, of the talents she had not known herself to possess, and disserts happily of how difficult it is for an artist to separate from a piece whenever he or she has to sell it. She acknowledges, nonetheless, that once a piece of art emerges has emerged form the self and the creative forces of an artist, it belongs to the world, and how its creator has the moral and ethical obligation to share it with others. She went on to speak of the uniqueness of each and every painting.

Another showing ensued in 2001, thia time at the Portuguese Community Centre of Laval, a town near Montreal, and yet another more recently at the Laurentian Bank where she works.

In 2003, she was invited to participate in the 17° Ciclo de Cultura Açoriana (annual event in Toronto focusing upon Azorean culture), where several of her paintings were on public display, more specifically, for the local Portuguese Community, and where received proposals to take part in future exhibits in this city.

Although painting only entered her life at age forty, Dora Barão is of he opinion that it is never too late to start something new.

"When I used to come back form art classes, I woudn't sleep at night, because every time I stared a new painting, I would see it finished in my mind. So, during the night, I would imagine the colours I was going to use in it. Sometimes, I had already used a certain colour, but during the night as I thought the canvas over, I would conclude that it would not work. I'd get up and go into the room where I paint, rub it out and start all over agin. At times, it would be four or five in the morning when my husband would come in to call me back to bed…"

Although Dora does not feel great affinity with the abstract, Dora focuses, of the great mastersthe famous author of Guernica and Spanish cubist, Pablo Picasso, confessing that no other painter has captivated as much or as profoundly.

Her future projects include learning and developing other techniques and mediums such as watercolour and, above all, to continue lending colour and form to the calling of her spirit where, in all she paints, her Azorean matrix, irremediably and inevitably, resides.