Loving Journey and Tribute

Artist Silvia PintoSouza

A Discussion with Silvia PintoSouza,
Archway Member Artist


Silvia PintoSouza, born in Bucaramanga, in Santander, Colombia, experienced a diverse and colorful educational path.  Her art began lovingly with her mother’s influence.  This continued in a Pan-American school, high school in Bogota, months in North Carolina as an exchange student, and ending with college in London.  Silvia later attended more art courses in Brazil, where her husband is from.  

With this lively art background, Silvia talks about her mother’s talented encouragement, giving her a solid start.
“When I was a child, my siblings and I would do our school homework on a big table in my mother’s studio.  She was an oil painter, and had her easel, paint tubes and work tools in that studio.  My grandfather became a world traveler after he retired.  He sent her art books from museums he visited, she could copy from the great Masters.  This is how she first learned to paint. 

My first artistic steps were at that table, next to my mother’s easel; I would draw while she painted.  Also in that big studio were her sewing machine and kit.  She was a marvelous designer of her own, my sister’s, and my dresses.  She even created a wardrobe for my dolls.  She said that you could see the quality of a dress when you looked inside and outside.  She liked for both to be perfect.   My mother painted until the last months of her life.  She won a Gold Medal at the Florence Biennale, just two months before she died. “

Silvia continues talking about these influences. 
“As an artist, I am visually stimulated by images with strong potential to become works of art by their rich color, and by a bold contrast between light and shadow, a geometrical and spatial composition or a variety of textures.  
I can say that I am eclectic, which according to the dictionary, is a ‘person who derives ideas, style or taste for a broad and diverse range of sources’.   Also, the use of collage and textures is an important means of creating diverse surfaces on the canvas, which become the base of my acrylic paintings.

Silvia's Mother

What type of message do I want to bring to my work?    Sometimes I ask myself, whatever happened to the concept of ‘Art for the sake of Art’?  The famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero once said: ‘The true objective in art is the pursuit of happiness, but the world seems to have forgotten about it.’ I totally agree with him.   If I can brighten the viewer’s heart with an image I have created, then I have accomplished my goal.” This is a tribute to Silvia’s talented mother and her easel and her sewing machine.