We have been promoting figurative artists and are committed to bring only what is most unique to UK Art Collectors. Here you will discover more about the works and interests of some of them:

 

In his photographic work, Conrado Zanotto adopts the unusual technique of ‘spore printing’ used to capture mycelium. The technique entails leaving mushroom "hats" on a photographic surface, which can be pressed or left in air isolation with a concave container on top of the mushroom.

The surface chosen for his printmaking are old photographs from 1950s Brazil, where we see elegant men and women (including nuns), all White, highly educated and upper class; all with phenotype of European descent.

The concept revolves around a metaphorical and semantic relationship between the aspects referring to European colonization in Brazil, with the colonization processes observed in the mushroom colonies and the intrinsic characteristics of the Fungi Kingdom. Fungi and mushrooms depend on other living beings for nutrition, they get food from other beings with which they associate. Human beings have similar characteristics, especially when we look at the true history behind the colonization processes, based on great genocides, with the extermination of native peoples, slavery, and erasure of cultures. As a consequence, we see the devastation of natural environments, the exploitation of poverty, systems of social control, and structural racism.

Zanotto’s art discusses these relationships and throws light on the processes of historical colonization through analogies transferred to the process of reprinting and re-signifying photographs with the introduction of a new element, which in nature is present from the beginning to the end of life processes.

Zanotto holds a BA in Social Communication, Advertising & Marketing (ESPM, São Paulo), and an MA in Art Practice from the prestigious Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, (FAAP, São Paulo). His works are in Latin American art collections such as the Oficina del Historiador, owned by UNESCO, in the city of Havana, Cuba. He holds an Art Award from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, and in 2012 he founded PONDER70, an art house in São Paulo.

Juliana Freire’s art practice focusses on Amerindian Cosmovisions, and the need for actual encounters with the Native ‘other’.

This interest resulted in expeditions to Brazil’s inner lands and to the remote villages of Native tribes in the Xingu region. This need is the artist’s way to find personal and symbolic pathways to ‘de-Christianization’, and ‘de-Personification’ (i.e.: with the notion of Persona as the mask we all wear to fit the societal prescriptions of the West).

Freire’s pilgrimages are journeys towards an individual understanding of Native epistemology that allows her to encounter ‘hidden internal territories’, which lay dormant within all of us for being part of so-called civilised, industrial and capitalist societies. 

Juliana Freire was born in Belo Horizonte and lives in São Paulo. She had solo exhibitions at the Casa do Olhar Luiz Sacilotto, Santo André, São Paulo, SP (2019) and the Centro Cultural da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, MG (2001). She has has several performances in her career, such as 'Deserto é Nascente | Ação Sintrópica', performance with Amanda Melo da Mota, which took place at the world renowned Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo (2020);  and ‘Ativismo Cósmico’, Casa Modernista, São Paulo, Brazil. She has curated exhibitions at major international art fairs and in New York.

 

In ‘Masked & Unmasked Portrait’, Peter McLeish explores psychological themes such as repressed desires, memories, and fears through figurativism. The hidden persona is at the fore here, being the mask a metaphor of what we all wish to hide in our day-to-day life. McLeish did not use brushes to create this eerie work, but adopted the encaustic technique, which is based on using rags and different grades of paper towel instead.

Some of the inspirations for this series of work come the writings and philosophies of Joseph Campbell (The Mask of God), Sigmund Freud (Das Ich und das Es), Carl Jung (The Integration of the Personality) as well as several mythologies from Africa, China, India, Japan and native North and South America.  

Influences for this series of portraits come from the works of J.M.W. Turner, Diego Velazquez, Francisco Goya, Rembrandt, van Raijin, Barnett Newman, as well as many other artists. 

McLeish exhibited these works in US art galleries such as the Grand Opening exhibition at the Udinotti Gallery in San Francisco & the Refiguring exhibition at Gallery 10LTD. in Washington, D.C.. He holds a BA Fine Arts from Concordia University: Montreal, Quebec, and a MA Fine Arts from University of Guelph: Guelph, Ontario. He has been awarded several research grants and sponsorships, has published extensively, and has a long list of interviews. He has engaged in film presentations, multimedia exhibitions and lecture tours, including at the prestigious University of Oxford and University of Cambridge in the UK. In 2003, McLeish Red Sprites research led to a collaboration with Dr. Colin Price from University of Tel Aviv on the previous NASA Space Shuttle Columbia's MEIDEX mission.