Ana D’Castro: The Infectious Dialogue Artist

Portuguese artist and architect Ana D’Castro has built a multidisciplinary practice shaped by movement, memory, and an almost scientific devotion to color. Her life across different continents has fueled a visual language rooted in contrast: the lush greens of Brazil and Singapore against the golden desert of the United Arab Emirates, where she now lives and works. Her paintings capture that richness, translating years of collected landscapes into layered surfaces that pulse with volume and emotion.

Painting for D’Castro is a daily ritual. It is structured, methodical, and yet intuitive, a process she describes as an “infectious dialogue” among the multiple works she creates at once. She treats color as both form and logic, measuring pigment like a chemist, then allowing it to erupt into unexpected combinations that create movement on the canvas.

Her artworks invite viewers into a world where architecture meets sensation, where time becomes a dimension to navigate. Through this conversation, D’Castro reflects on her global influences, her search for perfection in form, and the deep emotional charge she hopes to awaken in every piece.

An Interview with Ana D’Castro

By Carol Real

Who were your mentors early on in your career?

My grandparents, especially my grandmother who always believed in me, never allowing me to give up and constantly pushing me towards my goals. I grew up amid an artistic world, my grandfather was an artist therefore growing up I was always around his atelier. It was a natural environment for me, I learned through playing and experimenting with all sorts of materials in a very organic and effortless way.

On the other side my family business is in Industrial Paints manufacturing, therefore since an early age my fascination for paints, pigments and synthetique components has always been there. I always loved color and I remember since early age to be fascinated about the vibrancy of each gradient and how you mix them to create other colors. It’s a very exact method where you sit in the laboratory and measure with great precision how many milligrams of each dye you mix to create a determinate tone.

You were born in Portugal and have lived and worked in Brazil, Singapore, France, Switzerland, and now the UAE. How have these places inspired you and influenced your work?

Hard to choose my favorite city or country. They are all special with their own magic. They are all quite different from each other, with completely opposite cultures. The ability to travel throughout all Latin America, Asia, and Europe is inspiration itself. Different colors, abundant nature, languages and most importantly different colors and materials of the environments that surround you.
I have been living in Dubai for the past 10 years, and strangely it is the opposite of all the lush green environments I used to be surrounded by in Brazil, Singapore, Switzerland. Perhaps on a subliminal and subconscious level that’s a key point that influences my work. The fact that I have a completely different landscape around me filled with sandy deserts and golden tones. That contrast puts me inside an introspective zone where I have access to an imaginary landscape that I build with my own collected memories from all the places I have lived and visited. That’s why I would say my artworks are full of vivid colors and rich deep textures.

Can you speak about your creative process and art making? Do you have a studio routine?

I paint every day, just like any other job with schedules. My daily routine consists in having breakfast with my kids, take them to school, go to Pilates and come back to the studio around 10 a.m. I normally paint 8 to 9 hours a day on a normal day and a bit more when I have a deadline. Most importantly I take my practice very seriously as a commitment in terms of hours dedicated to the studio practice.
My process consists in painting several pieces at the same time. By doing it so there´s an element of infectious dialogue between all the artworks as if during the process of creation, they contagiously impact each other.

What do you mean by the “infectious dialogue” between works created simultaneously?

On a subconscious level I am constantly being fed by the evidence itself, therefore there´s a constant obsession of mitigating the action of matter and form and elevating it to a pure and perfect revisualized outreach. Throughout the creative process there´s a continuous practice of realization and elimination of ideas, fundaments, and paradigms, reinventing the theory per se and persistently searching for knowledge and perfection. The progression and mutation of the processual interplay embrace a journey of destructive creation.

Do you listen to/watch any form of media while working?

I listen to music the whole day, from classical music, piano solos, Brazilian bossa nova, fado and Portuguese music and techno and house music. It really depends on my mood and normally the style of music changes throughout the day.

Which writers, musicians, architects, designers or artists inspire you the most?

I read a lot, although not as much as I would like to. Mostly novels. My favorite is Saramago and George Orwell. Musician and composer, I would say Satiè and Chilly Gonzalez. Architect Herzog & De Meuron as it is still my favorite practice since I worked there 14 years ago.

Your work blends art, architecture, and a sense of time. How do you think about the role of color and materials in your paintings?

My works evoke a constant study of color and the juxtaposition of different pigments. Through my practice my aim is to manipulate color and the subtle variations of the same gradient to create volume, depth and perspective within the canvas. While composing the movement of the piece I carefully study how color will add or subtract light and shadow into the ensemble. Color plays a major role in my artworks, and I am constantly looking for the exact tone, the role it plays by allocating it in a specific place and how instantly this act either dilutes or enhances the volumetric composition.
I paint with oil, acrylic, spray paint and enamel and I normally use all of them in one painting.

Do you think artistic skill is something we are born with or something acquired from our surroundings?

I wouldn´t say it is a skill you are born with, as I believe that skills are just techniques that a person acquires by learning and practicing. Like being a doctor or a lawyer, you are not born genetically with that skill, you enroll in school and university to learn that skill.
What I do believe is that artists are born with a higher sensibility to explore and react to the stimulation given by the environment that surrounds them. In all sort of arts, from music, dance and fine arts, the artist sees the world with different ways therefore interpreting their message in artistic ways.

You work across multiple disciplines including painting, architecture, interior design, and street art installations. Where do you feel most at home creatively?

I believe in multiple practices, as I strongly think that they are all merged and interconnected. One complements the other and vice-versa.

What can the public expect from your latest show in New York, “Efflorescence: Variations on Colors”?

Vibrant colors, texture, proportional compositions, and a lot of emotions on the canvas. I would say that my message is directly connected with each artwork and how they represent an embodiment of how color speaks the language of the soul, expressing deep emotions and connections through beautiful waltz of colorful fragments dancing through the canvas. Each of my projects creates a kinetic immersion into a sensorial world of colors, wherein the visitors become a part of the artwork itself. My work is analogous to a tridimensional fusion of art, architecture, and the dimension of time, which is added by audiences’ trajectory in space around the artwork.

Ultimately, I just want people to feel an emotion, deep, intense, and embracing that will draw them into the canvas leaving an emotional and pictorial presence in their mind.

What is your dream creative project?

The next one that I will do, truly because I believe that each project is a step forward in my career and I would rather be led by the incognita of a dream project than living conditioned during my whole creative pathway just to reach a destination. As people say, it´s not about the destination but rather about the journey.

Favorite quote…

It´s bedtime! Go to sleep!

Editor: Lisa Portscher

https://www.instagram.com/lisaportscher/

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