World Inspired Landscapes: Brazil

Brazil is a vast country with many aspects to its landscape. Rolling hills, plains, twisting rivers interspersed with arid land and rugged coastlines. I was drawn to the Amazon river as a subject, its shape, colours and story seem to describe a lot about Brazil. When the colonials came, the river people had to either join them, fight, or flee. Many still live near the Amazon and on the numerous islands found in the river delta. The local people have a vast wealth of resources including land, fish, fruit and medicines found in the dense rainforest. Sadly, resource exploitation and climate change is taking its toll on Brazil and its delicate rainforest. In this painting, I was inspired by the river, and depicted a typical ferry that the locals take to get from place to place. They dance up on the top floor, and the local indigenous people will row boats out to intercept the ferries, then they climb with ropes and sell shrimp or fruit or whatever they can harvest to the people on the boat. The travelers also throw bags of supplies out to the locals like shoes and clothes. The ship captains know this and allow these transactions. We learned all this mostly from watching a documentary on YouTube called A River and its People by Stop Over. It is an old fashioned documentary and well worth the time to watch it. 

The bottom left represents construction, the land has been cleared and the stilts being built will be used to support a small house. They have to build houses that way because the river floods all the time. I also depicted a bounty of imaginary fruit plants, there are oranges, papayas, mangoes, bananas, coffee, lemons and whatever else you can imagine!  

World Inspired Landscapes: Brazil with fruit tree, 10 x 11" cold press, watercolour, May 2021 (No. 2657b)