My artistic practice is a combination of painting, drawing, sculpting, collage, and elementary engraving techniques such as monoprint and woodcut. Always looking for beauty in the unconventional and with a keen interest in recycling waste, don´t be surprised to find me digging through rubbish on construction sites or "treasure hunting" at the beach for objects and materials that catch my eye and meet some of my ideas.
I draw most of my inspiration from everyday life, people and nature ; but my earlier experiences in life, childhood memories, loss, and a consequent "joie de vivre" that coexists with a certain melancholy also tend to appear in many of my abstract paintings.
Making the most of the colour and texture of the materials, in this game of “hide and seek” that characterises my practice, the artworks often provoke in those who see them a certain sense of calm, peace and light; even though the under layers of most is the chaos of the emotional storms natural to human experience.
Mariana Horgan (b. 1985) is a Portuguese artist, born in Lisbon. She attended the Painting course and the Relief Printing Techniques course, both at the Art Academy in London (2022), as well as the Painting course at Ar.Co - Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual, in Lisbon (2019). An abstract artist, Horgan works on medium and large format paintings and small monotypes on paper. She uses a variety of materials, from acrylic to powdered pigments, in a subtle palette with vivid punctuations. Her mostly monochromatic work is the result of a process in which, by building up layers, elements that were initially expunged are revealed or hidden. With a balanced composition, her work can be recognized as a meeting between European Tachisme and American Colour Field, both from the 50s. The stain and the loose elements bring a duality between tranquillity and tension, the controlled and the spontaneous.