I was eight when I began attending the Santa Cecília School of Music and Arts in Capanema, a neighborhood of Curitiba. I remember the woman who owned the school. It was there that I learned the foundations of academic fine art, working with charcoal, dry pastel and oil pastel.
I was very restless — and I still am. The school owner eventually stopped teaching children under fifteen. I still tell the story with a laugh and joke that my restlessness had something to do with it.
I have several works from that period. Some have survived better than others. Looking at them again, I find still-life studies, flowers and birds, along with early exercises in observation and composition. They record a boy discovering materials and learning how to look.
These drawings hold an important part of my beginning. Decades later, I am glad to share them as living memories of my artistic education.