ARTIST BIO

I have a keen interest in painting traditions from other cultures and times.

I am a professional painter specializing in 15th-century Primitive Flemish methodologies of painting, as well as 19th-century Academic drawing and painting techniques.
 

In the United Kingdom, I was twice a visiting lecturer for the National Portrait Gallery, where I was invited to teach Renaissance drawing techniques with silverpoint during the exhibition 'The Encounter' - featuring drawings by Leonardo, Dürer, and Holbein.

I also taught for several years at the Saatchi Gallery, Cast Courts of the Victoria & Albert Museum (as an external tutor), and Chiswick Business Park (working with companies such as Paramount Pictures and Discovery Channel), among others. Since 2021, I have been teaching drawing and painting to Walt Disney artists in North America, the UK, and Singapore through their teams at Industrial Light and Magic.
 

Additionally, I am a visiting lecturer for Indonesia's state university (Universitas Negeri Jakarta and Malang). I have also taught drawing and painting at the Islamic University of Malang (AmCor of Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang), the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon, the Art Institute of the Autonomous University of Lisbon, Portugal's National Gallery of Ancient Art, the Faculty of Fine Arts of Dhaka University, KAUST, and others.
 

In 2022, I was invited to be the first artist in residence at Portugal's National Museum of Contemporary Art. Since then, I have had several solo exhibitions in national museums and UNESCO world heritage sites in Portugal (Lisbon, Porto, Batalha, Cascais), Italy (Lucca and Florence), the UK (London), Bangladesh (Dhaka), and Nepal (Kathmandu and Patan), attracting a total of about 300,000 visitors.

My style has been influenced by the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and Zurbarán. I also love the fine details of Dürer, the expressive line of Ingre's graphite drawings, the sculptural paintings of Théodore Géricault and Solomon J. Solomon. I admire the flesh tones of Bouguereau, the play of light of Ivan Aivazovsky, the intimacy in Mary Cassatt's pastels of mother and child; also the colour of Sorolla, the expressiveness of Nicolai Fechin, Winslow Homer and Isaac Levitan as well as the brush strokes of John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn.

I revere the artworks of contemporary figurative artists like Paula Rego (especially her pastels and etchings), Lucian Freud, Giorgos Rorris, Jenny Saville, Cristina Troufa, the landscapes of Marc Dalessio and Ray Roberts, Daniel Sprick, Jordan Sokol, Dennis Perrin (still life), Scott Waddell, Zhaoming Wu, Antonio Santin, Gerhardt Richter. I also admire abstract art by Howard Hodgkin, Art Venti, Yago Hortal, Kwang-Young Chun and installations by James Turrell and Janet Echelman.

www.nelson-ferreira.com
www.bargue.org

Common misspelling: Nelson Ferriera