Adventure (Patreon)

Hello, hello! Quaraci here!

Guys… I’m back from a truly delightful, life-changing trip to Russia. When you’re from Brazil~South America, it’s very unlikely to actually go there, for a number of reasons. First, it’s an expensive trip, more expensive than, say, going to the USA (which is a fairly frequent destination to us, Brazilians), and few people here can afford the plane tickets, hotels, and the like. Second, there’s a potential language barrier involved: although I felt confident about my own skills and managed to communicate fairly well, speaking Portuguese, English, Spanish, and some French didn’t help me at all in some situations. This is how I learned how warm, generous and sincere my fellow Russian friends are. I appreciate how every single person I met there tried to overcome this barrier, so that we could share some basic ideas and needs. Third, and this one is a rather sad one: we learn virtually nothing about Russia in Brazilian schools, so we don’t get to appreciate its History, Architecture, Arts, culture, and so on.

The first reason was overcome, to some extent, with the help of each and every one of you. One day at a time, this extra revenue that comes from Patreon has the potential to become more than that. In the future, it may turn into a way of living, and I’d like to thank you all so much for that. I’m doing my best in order to take my skills to the next level, and that would be next to impossible without this transition from an amateur to a professional artist. This trip has something to do with this, by the way, because I’ve been to so many wonderful museums, surrounded by so many original works from the old masters, that I’ve learned new tricks and techniques every day, sometimes from Nesterov, sometimes from Makovsky, Arkhipov, Repin, sometimes from Polenov.

The second one was easier. I learned the russian alphabet beforehand, a few phrases, and built a small, ~200 words vocabulary. That wasn’t nearly enough to start a conversation in Russia, but it sure made it easier to read street signs and get some names of artist that didn’t have English translations with them at the museums. 

Which takes us, finally, to the third reason: this trip opened my eyes to Russian fine arts in ways I could never predict. There’s a vast, new canon to learn from, where mythological ideas intersect with religious, fairy tale, and profane elements all at the same time. Wonderful realms of lights, colors, and shapes, but also stories. I’ll probably try to learn the language properly now, and see where the rabbit hole goes. 

I feel like I’m still floating, lost in those wonderful museums, streets, churches, galleries, ateliers, and cafes. There’s still a vast amount of new material for me to digest, but, hopefully, we’ll see more and more of it in our monthly paintings. =^____________^=

Thank you all for being a part of this adventure.

Q.