"The Last Days of
Paradise", oil on canvas, Antonio Pessoa 2002,
as the title makes perfectly clear, unquestionably points
out the artist's intuitive premonition of his astounding
super productive Romantic Period's final countdown and
inevitable mysterious and cinematic troubled ending.
ATLANTIS, Antonio Pessoa's macro space art studio, stands
today as thelegendary historical evidence, and symbol
of the artist's most productive period up to now, during
which an intensive and eclectic method of art action
had thepower and ability to come up with one of the
most gigantic and striking fine art collections of the
twentieth century's last decade. This accentuated fact,
furnished with an endless display of action movie, romantic
comedy, even drama, plus erotic unspeakable episodes,
mainly taking place in the dim-lit seductively designed
and decorated ATLANTIS Studio, indeed gave birth to
a wonderful, brilliant and encyclopedic art production,
matching the great masters traditional modus operandi,
conduct, lifestyle, maximized efficiency and outstanding
creative commitment, where detailed academic research,
highly elaborated projects of artistic performance,
art action, passion and energy systematically aiming
to create what indeed turned out to be and impossible
made possible six years in a row super-human art production
marathon. However, these accomplishments and success
secrets, strange as it seems, still remain a public
mystery despite all the reports and eventual speculation
related to Pessoa's Romantic Period (1997 - 2002) at
the idyllic ATLANTIS art Home Studio. Despite the Romantic
Period's ins and outs and ups and downs, the artist
was well aware that on the whole he was living the time
of his life, and getting a kick out of his daily intensive
art making ritual and his bohemian city night life unspeakable
adventures. Despite the fact that he was living and
painting basically or even entirely apart from the worldwide
art scene's ins, outs and abouts, another extensive
variety of stimulation sources and resources were actually
feeding his inspiration, motivation, and creative burning
flame, arousing his organism to powerful art action
in such a way which has made Pessoa's Romantic Period
turn out to be an everyday mental process involving
contemporary art versions of the twentieth century's
reknown modern masters let alone new ideas and concepts
the artist skillfully knew how to express on to his
thousands of artworks, namely oils and acrylics on canvas,
watercolors, mixed medias, drawings, sketches and even
unique style interesting installations. Now the frequently
asked question at stake concerns the connection between
Pessoa's taking it global spontaneous footloose lifestyle
and his unbreakably self-disciplined daily art-making
implacability, serious approach, dependent upon solid
values of artistic commitment and absolute devotion.
This unsolved mystery, brain teaser riddle, mindbreaker
puzzle, is still an on-going challenge even for me,
for his closest friends, let alone all of them Antonio
Pessoa's fans, clients, admirers, fellow artists and
public in general. Far from being an over and out archived-
investigation, Pessoa's Romantic Period What, Why, Where
and How, still unavailable information summary, is a
well alive issue and biographical thrilling process
to such an extent that not even lyrical prose and appealing
art reviews seem to succeed to cool it down and let
it go, not at least for the time being. ATLANTIS, after
all has been for the artist a once in a lifetime heavenly
Paradise, fact and not merely an assumption, given the
so many told and even untold signs available to invigorate
this hypothesis, or more accurately a shared theory
which is by now widely taken for granted. Thereby, purposefully
procrastinating worldwide reputation and public recognition,
Antonio Pessoa during his Romantic Period's six years
of growing personal artistic realization and night life
breathless explorations, strange and crazy as it seems
and uniquely unambitious and ambiguously self sufficient
as it was indeed, earns more than enough money to pay
his three houses plus extravaganza bills and embrace
fine arts enjoying the privilege of no interferences
whatsoever, plus carrying on living a romantic-erotic-artistic
lifestyle, lavishly staged, spectacular, Kafkanian...
apparently without pondering whether it was worth the
possibility of a bigger time spending investment in
the complex boring process of a worldwide career situation
and his art universal promotion. I can imagine how wonderful
life was for the artist, when, as far as the world art
scene was concerned, there was nothing to do therefore
wonderful to wake up glad to know nothing had been left
undone. Nevertheless, in the meantime, Antonio Pessoa
without even being aware of it, is actually creating
what a few years later was bound to become the heart
and soul of his world reputation. The Romantic Period!
ATLANTIS art studio was indeed Paradise! I suppose that's
why it might have been a rather nostalgic moments time
lost in the universe of recent memories and in the feedback
of a present turning fast into past that Pessoa imagined
and actually painted "The Last Days of Paradise
". Winds of changes were blowing across the Atlantic,
just to put it in the best poetic way I know how, highlighted
signs of emotional hurricanes and stormy chaos were
showing up here and there and everywhere, sometimes
disguised as a Celtic tale comedy-drama short episode,
some other times indeed making way for a dressed to
kill ruthless master of harsh reality.
