" puer aeternus "  , 2022 / Praia do Pedrogão

"Don't grow up, it's a trap!" 

Peter Pan 

Peter Pan's syndrome (do latim: Puer aeternus) is characterized by individuals who can't see themselves as adults and take their obligation seriously. They have childish and irresponsible behavior as they seem to lose track of reality. 

It is still difficult to admit that we can't live forever and live eternal adventures without some sense of engagement and liability. 

But isn't that the fun part of being a grown up? Making every moment count? Creating the things that outlast you. 

We must be true to ourselves and others in the pursuit of our happiness and growth. 

That's what being a grown up is. Taking a hold of our fate and not relying on others to do so. 

So just… grow up!

" love and guilt "  , 2022 / Lisboa

All of us often feel trapped between feelings of guilt, love and hate and feel how fine the line is between them. 

My piece tries to capture the limbo between love and guilt, much as my relationship with my art which is fueled by that duality and power. 

"My conscience hath a thousand 

several tongues 

And every tongue brings in a several tale, 

And every tale condemns me 

for a villain." 

William Shakespeare

" the death of the poor "  , 2022 / Biarritz

The death of the poor

"it's death that comforts us, alas! and makes us live ;

It is the goal of life ; it is the only hope

Which, like an elixir, makes us inebriate

And gives us the courage to march until evening" 

Charles Baudelaire 

It was always with a constant belief in a better world that our predecessors battled on a daily basis. 

Death as a final goal of liberation served as fuel for fast and consolidated labour strength. 

However this past is mortgaged regarding the future. 

In the past labour made the man, honest work, sun to sun man work served a higher purpose so that the children and grandchildren would have a better and more worthy life. 

And what are we doing with these long builded tools that have been passed on from generation to generation? 

What are the values that we currently transmit our children? 

What gives us now "courage to march until evening"?

" jay the boy "  , 2022 / Palmela

Everything and everyone can have more than one side.

This is a small tribute to one of the most influencial skaters of all time.    R.I.P. Jay Adams

" hanging dreamers "  , 2022 / Pataias

. to dream:

Contemplate the possibility of doing something. 

The mere definition of dream opens a world of possibilities, opportunities and of vast and limitless fantasies. 

But the modern world tends to have our dreams and hopes put in boxes, closed, narrowed or limited. 

The social bubbles and social dynamics we live in impose filters that lead to confined aspirations and insecure adults. 

Our creative self and our creative freedom should not be domesticated. We should ban all ties and cut the threads of our hanging dreamers.

" behind our masks "  , 2022 / São Pedro de Moel

We take the mask off to keep the one on the inside.

That the world around us crosses swampy landscapes is nothing new; What is new, perhaps, is to see how our lives change and change in what is increasingly immutable, in the habits of each and every one, and in what will possibly be seen in a future from which we cannot escape.

 In the shadow of what remains, is the chronology of the imaginary. Since expression is a unique vehicle in the way we have been communicating since always, and forever, we attribute today to free will the universality of interpretations that reveal themselves to be adjacent to any behavior: the motor-visage, the first facade - closed for works -, the artistic exhibition that we attribute to the way we look and how we are looked at, in an almost perfect juggling act between what we want to show and what we actually show.

 Herein lies the true superpower of disguise: the infinite possibility of unreality.

The mere mask, and its effect on us.

We feel more secure, more confident, free from danger and fear, under its purview. We masterfully hide any flaw or feature, we attribute merit to the courage to be able to do and say everything that we had not said until then. We reveal the bow to the countenance we bring.

 Countless times we have recognized how the fear of a face is capable of generating change, something that has been marked in human history through the great wars, in events that have developed until the culmination of important movements that appear today imprinted in societies and in everyday life. There are even those who say - with the mask they choose - that we live a war; a phenomenon that will undoubtedly change our form of world organization.

 The face matters for communication and its behavior is an integral part of our culture, but what face will we see in a world of masks? Is face covering what we can expect from each other?

 By attributing a false protective power to the mask, our supreme security, as well as the stability of the ego, will be in equal threat.

Without looking at classes, will the practice of empathy and its social impact serve as sufficient reflection?

 Deep down, the masked being is nothing more than a tool that increases an illusory sensation, when displaced from its elementary purpose.

 We thus gravitate between enigma and astonishment in the freedom to decide not to show what the face reveals.

 By merging the frame of the disguise with the real face, we arrive at a painless embankment within ourselves: a plunge into the collective hand that we bring to our face.

 "The mask that belongs to everyone and that belongs to no one. The mask that protects, that hides, that reveals and that deceives. The mask and its plurality."

 " new landscapes "  , 2021 / Amadora

"The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

Marcel Proust

Roque Gameiro, born in Minde in 1864, was one of the great portuguese watercolourists.

His penetrating eye could transpose the other, in a duality between soul and body, well patent in his self portrait.

With bucolic settings and natural landscapes we can´t help but feel a certain poetry in his draw.

It was exactly that penetrating eye that Ricardo Romero wanted to pay tribute to in Amadora, giving it a new context to his vision, taking us to simpler times with the laundresses in the river in a coordenated dance always followed by that look that lockes us in a bond.  by @sarafabião

 " hate is a wired weapon "  , 2021 / Leiria

With a frame from 1995's "The Hate" by director Mathieu Kassovitz we are transported to a world of anger, justice (or the lack of) and hate feeding hate in a neverending loop. A ever falling society that never quite get's back on her feet.

Ricardo Romero reminds us that hate is a wired weapon always charged and that we have the power to decide to, or not to, take the shot.

by @sarafabião

" when the children play " , 2021 / Pataias

Starting from a referent from 1911, this is one of Lewis Hine's photographs that served to bring to light the enormous scourge of child labor in the early 20th century.

" future is coming " , 2021 / Marinha Grande

“The work “Future is coming” (2021) consists of a mural in which Ricardo Romero involves us in an open-ended visual narrative.

At first glance, it appears that it is a satellite or a probe, in which a series of plots develops. In fact, the parallelepiped structure that forms the large stain of the painting is a mold used in the plastics industry, an integral part of the culture and tradition of Marinha Grande.

It is in this “satellite mold” that a new world is inscribed, where experiences collide and actions are transmuted, in a surreal and poetic vision of the future.”

" a menina das camélias " , 2021 / Viseu

“In this mural painting, Ricardo Romero finds a visual and emotional correspondence with his work, in a historical reference of 20th century Portuguese painting. It is from the work “A Menina das Camélias” (1912) by the Portuguese painter José de Almeida e Silva (1864-1945) that Ricardo Romero reproduces this painting, originally painted in oil on canvas, changing its scale, framing, and inevitably, the innovative new technique of which it is made, the spray. It is an emotional, melancholy image, but strangely captivating to the eyes of those who pass by this work.”

text by @fabiocolacostudio

" Inês e Pedro " , 2021 / Alcobaça

“Inês and Pedro”

“ A story as old as time, of forbidden, fugitive loves.

Of words and exchanged fleeting glances.

An immobile, immortal love...

So often disturbed by outside distractions, malevolent forces, disapproving looks and fulfilled expectations...

The passage of existence makes temptations and obstacles seem different, but the feeling remains. Immobile. In time. And in memory.”     

By @sarafabião

" xalavarfestival " / 2021 , Vieira de Leiria

" casa das imagens Lauro António " / 2021 , Setúbal 

"phobos" / 2021 , Évora 

" brothers in arms " / 2021, Setúbal 

" officer´s laments " ,  2021 / Setúbal

" famished fortress " , 2021 / Pataias 

" famished fortress “  / 2021

“The fugitive's body is a famished fortress."

André Tecedeiro in "A axila de Egon Schiele"

In the post-South Korean dictatorship, child abandonment was frequent due to extreme poverty and weak regulation.

In this image of Kim Ki Chan we can see a child alone, with her most precious asset on her back but with the fear clearly evident in her little face.

In this "enchanted forest", we managed to "protect" the child, with Nature as the adoptive mother, the treetops instead of the roof and the ivy to substitute the wall, complementing this safe harbor.

" family and loyalty " , 2021 , Leiria

" family and loyalty " , 2021

South Korea, 1980. It could be France, the 90s. Or even Portugal in 2021.

The stick would be replaced by a smartphone. The clothes would be different.

The look certainly the same. The sense of justice, togetherness, belonging, family, loyalty ... of not allowing anyone in the circle to get hurt, be wronged, of giving the body to the "bullets" by the "brothers".

Let us never forget that the instruments and tools change but the values are immutable.

May we never lose the will to fight for our "brother".

" clarão " , 2020 / collab with nunoviegas.pt

" Clarão (Glare) " / 2020

It is a pleasure to present this work that I made in collaboration with the great artist @nunoviegas.pt author of the hands that hold a sheet of paper, on which I reproduced a period photograph.

The title of the work and the historical image it calls for, make reference to the tradition of glass as an essential raw material for the socio-economic development of Marinha Grande from its beginnings to contemporary times.

It is important to mention a detail, which at first sight may go unnoticed: from the breath of the artisan who creates a piece of glass a bird comes out. This bird is nothing more than a metaphor, not only for the importance of the raw material in use, but also, like the first intervention, a reference to nature.

" gaspar " , 2020 / Leiria

“ Gaspar ” / 2020

That’s my dog. Faithful companion and my best friend in the last 12 years ... within the “matilha” (group of dogs) always occupied a special place and could not be any different to debut this new painting technique .... 2.0 is the result of a 6 months research, together with my team.

" dancing Leiria " , 2020 / Leiria collab with Inesa Markava 

“Dancing (Leiria)” / 2020

In this intervention I explored movement once again as a visual expression, a recurring notion in my latest works, such as in the series of paintings “Timeless” (2019-2020).

Once again using Eadweard Muybridge's photo-sequences as a reference, this mural painting shows a ballerina living in the city of Leiria, named Inesa Markava,in a sequence of choreographed movements done by hersel, registered by myself bringing them together. in a visual timeline with a middle, but with no apparent beginning and end.

" play time " , 2020 / Mata dos Marrazes 

“ Play Time ” / 2020

Is anephemeral intervention in a public space that reflects the current social and political landscape of Mata dos Marrazes. The half-pipe, normally used by skaters, is detached from its original function when it is ironically changed to a golf course. Contrary to what was expected on a golf course, surrounded by a green, flat and not very sinuous landscape, this version proposes to the public a subversive version of the game, in which the audience's interaction does not apply to the game itself, but to the dynamics of the surrounding landscape, more precisely, a reflection on the deforested area of the forest that surrounds this space; in a contemplative attitude with a vision of the future of a devastated landscape .

" pastorinha contemporânea " , 2018 / Leiria Arte Pública 

" recordação " , 2017 / Setúbal

" street dogs " , 2003 / ...