Paintings on the walls, on the floor, on the table and everywhere – this is what Mariane da Silva Freitas’ room looks like. However, the pictures can hardly be described as paintings. Rather, they are collages of dried flowers, cut-out letters, candle wax, and painting. She used to only make collages with things cut out of magazines, now she mixes styles and materials.
Marie is Brazilian and has been living in Munich for five years. This is where she will complete her training in nursing this year. In the time she spends away from the hospital, she paints to free herself from her thoughts and the hectic everyday life. “I use painting as a mechanism to calm myself down,” she says. “We live in a world that moves far too fast.”
She devotes all of Marie’s care to nursing, leaving nothing for art. Perfectionism has no place in her pictures either. If the paper tears or anything falls on the picture, it’s part of it. “I paint my pictures on the floor, giving them the opportunity to experience something unexpected,” she says.
A recurring theme in Marie’s paintings is reuse. She does this with flowers, unusual materials and things she finds on the street. She has been recycling trash into art since she was a child, earning her the nickname “Ferro-Velho” in her family – in Brazil, that’s a person who buys junk. It makes her feel good to give objects a new life.
Essential to her art is that it has to be done after or during the dancing: “I put on a playlist, start dancing and what comes out is this madness that represents exactly how I’m feeling at the moment.” , she says. The result is images that appear as if they are moving. Colored spirals, footprints and lines that are anything but straight.
Marie’s paintings were never exhibited, except on the walls of her friends. If she kept everything, she says, there would be no more space in her room. That’s why she gives away everything. “A friend of mine has a picture of me in Vienna. And I’m sending this one to Portugal,” she says, pointing to a tribute to her favorite snack – hummus. She likes that her feelings decorate walls somewhere.