Playing Beyond the Canvas: Beatriz Santos

Beatriz Santos, born in Lisbon, raised in London, a mixed-media artist and beautiful soul, soon to complete her masters at the Slade School in London. Zehra, our own co-founder, also a visual artist, chatted with Beatriz about inspirations, references, emotions, mediums and the process of creating. What struck us about Beatriz was her desire to use art as a way to overcome what she sees and feels as personal and worldly limitations. Using words such as ‘delicious’ and ‘playful’, we admired how deeply committed she is to not having anything too rigid. She paints, prints, uses papier-mâché and writes! Beatriz subverts things many do not usually look at, like nostalgic items others may consider ‘trash’, from stickers, to childhood toys to newspaper. These aesthetics, with loose self-portraiture and figures that tell stories, combined with both conscious and unconscious influences of her Iberian heritage, create very dynamic and multi-faceted work. 

Doing these artist interviews allows us to appreciate an artist’s work on a whole new level. We found Beatriz’s work through Instagram, as numerous great artistic relationships are formed in our modern world. At first glance, we were already enamoured by the emotion in the work, and the way her frames are art too. Our in-depth dialogue allowed us to understand things we may not have previously questioned, and see things we hadn’t seen prior. Beatriz describes her work with a welcoming warmth, regular nods to humour make viewing her work all the more meaningful. Learning her grandmother was a seamstress can help understand her diverse medium usage, her working with materials beyond paint and canvas. Her Portuguese heritage explains her use of bright colours, and can perhaps help evoke a sense of travelling to sunny southern Europe. Doing these interviews allows us to feel some of the invisible connections between the art and the artist, like a physical force in the air. 

Hopefully, reading our favourite bits of conversation between Beatriz and Zehra might allow you to feel this as well…

Zehra:  What was your earliest memory engaging with art? And what prompted you into this field? 

Beatriz:  I think I often made artworks as a child. So I don't really have a first defining memory. I liked to make drawings and watercolours in my grandma's kitchen. Sometimes I would use dry pasta and glitter to decorate my drawings or to make necklaces. So that's always been with me. And a really amazing experience was when I was 14: My parents took me to see the Chris Ofili retrospective at Tate Modern. That was like the first proper art exhibition I remember visiting. I really remember the humour and the use of collage in that exhibition. 

Zehra: I think it's really special when an artist can make you feel something almost childish, but with a deepness to it.

Beatriz:  There are quite a lot of childish aspects to my work in that I use papier-mâché to build frames or decorative elements in my work. And there are all kinds of things that remind me of my childhood: such as ribbons, frills and fringes. I also use objects that I actually kept from my childhood: glossy inkjet photographs that have that kind of noughties feel, Kipling monkey keychains of various kinds. And I guess it's just to key in several registers of memory and missing. I think often when we make art as children, it has very little to do with the commercial value of the object. Children are so great at being really creative with the way they use things. They might cover a book with stickers and change the meaning of the story or something like that. That's something I love is using things that might be worthless or trashy, like recycled cardboard or newspaper. But the way I use them evokes an emotional value. Because obviously, the best things in life and the things we love can't really be paid for, or often don’t last for long. 

Zehra:  I like the fact that there's this nostalgia in your work. And obviously, it's quite personal to you. But I think anyone viewing your work can also feel that and it might take the viewer back into their childhood. It's nice to see more and more young artists trying to reach out to the viewer rather than push them away. And you definitely do that with your work. What is your process like on a day where you make art?

Beatriz:  I love doing one hundred and one things, as you can probably tell from the chaotic nature of my studio. What has really helped me, I think this year approaching my degree show, is just sticking to one main activity per day. So I actually don't paint every day, I'll be either mono-printing, printmaking, sketching, papier-mâché-ing, and all these different activities. I try to spend more or less a day or half a day doing them so that the process can become playful. And also lots of breaks, lots of treats. I'm definitely not somebody who toils away relentlessly in the studio. And I love to consider so that I feel confident when I make my next move.

Zehra:  I don't think painting should be like a linear process. 

Beatriz:  Yeah, totally. I mean, I write poems as well. So yeah, I'd say a lot of my works come from poems. And I have poems that then inspire images.

Beatriz’s poeticism, perspective on savouring the childlike joys of life, and her mixed inspirations were evident through the way she described her piece ‘The Catch-up’ .

Beatriz: It's two women catching up on one of their beds. And then these little papier-mâché medallions are what the conversation is. I'm not sure if they'll remain photographic or if I'm going to paint them instead. They're also very specifically from a residency I did in Madrid, where I was drawing in the Prado. The medallions are about my experience there and how I enjoyed it. And that's what I imagined that I'm telling my friend in this painting. But it tries to encompass everything, you know, from sweet shops, to my own sketches to you know, things I was eating, to people I was calling on Facetime or watching on Tiktok, you know…

Zehra: The way you draw your fingers, there's something quite special about it, quite distinctive. Is there a reason for the way you paint your figures? Is it conscious?

Beatriz: I think partially Yes and partially No. So I know how to draw figures academically. That has informed my practice to an extent, but I often try to leave that behind.  I draw everything from memory, or from my imagination, rather than from any kind of observation. 

Zehra: So you don't look at a reference?

Beatriz: Never. 

Zehra: Oh, that's amazing. 

Beatriz:  So for me, everything is really filtered through memory. And what that gives me is a kind of freedom with the figures, where I want them to be distorted. It's the emotion that they embody, that's the most important thing for me.

Zehra: You just drawing straight from emotion is something that takes a lot of bravery.

Beatriz: I think the actual reason is that I'm one of the worst photographers in the world. So this is what I'm getting at when I paint is trying to capture what I am always unable to do with photography.

Zehra: I also love how you kind of make outside just art outside of just the canvas. You really experiment, playing with the framing and re-interpreting boundaries of a canvas and I see a lot of your work. Do you have any reason behind that? 

Beatriz: Well, I think in just a very simple way... I love it. 

The way Beatriz told us this was with such joy and conviction. It was impactful to both Zehra listening to it in person and Sahara hearing the transcription. She told us in other parts of the interview that the layers to the piece, such as fun frames, are also a way to make the viewer pause and think a little. Playfulness and humour can be powerful, intellectual and meaningful messaging, especially in visual self-expression. Our last pocket Beatriz’s wisdom is on art heritage in different global perspectives. When asked by Zehra about her favourite artists, Beatriz mentions Chagall, Paula Rego and Caravaggio. But the most potent piece she talks about shows the depth of her emotional and historical knowledge of art, and goes to show her playful approach is not devoid of depth, in fact the opposite.

Beatriz: I saw it at the Tate recently… It's by Pushpamala N (see here),  a contemporary Indian photographer. When I saw it hung it was a huge print hung with a golden frame. So it's exactly the same pose as this famous painting depicting the history of Vasco de Gama, the first Portuguese sailor to arrive in India, having gone via the Cape of Good Hope at the bottom of Africa. And I love this work, because it reveals the theatricality of history painting, the whole thing is a bit of a masquerade. The fact that the gold frame was there was such a kind of satire. Because I think painting, especially the tradition I'm in, which is the Western tradition, is so stuck in powerplay justifying empire and monarchy, and the gold frame has so much to do with that. 

That’s it for this interview. Leaving you on a powerful emotional and historical piece of wisdom on art. We were very allured by her outlooks on life and artistic practice. We definitely need more art like hers in the world!

You can find Beatriz @beatrizsantosart on Instagram. Feel free to contact us via email or Instagram DM if you’re interested in purchasing any of her works. You can also browse them on the shop section of our website!