Miguel Barros
Miguel Barros was born in Lisbon in the year of 1962 and has triple citizenship: Canadian, Portuguese and Angolan.
In 1975, Miguel’s family moved to Brazil for a year. This experience made Miguel decide to invest his education in the Arts.
He holds a degree in Interior Architecture and Design, from IADE (Lisbon, Portugal), 1984.
He has designed china for Vista Alegre, after winning the National Design Award in Portugal in 1984.
From 1987 till 1999, Miguel has worked in an institution whose goal was to help drug addicts in their recovering process. Miguel was in charge of the Painting and Drawing Atelier where he combined his artistic and human relation skills to create programs to help the recovery of the participants.
During this period, India has drawn Miguel imagination and inspiration. Moved by this motivation, Miguel has made several trips to India, spending there long periods of time on each of his trips. As a consequence, the East has become a recurrent subject in his paintings.
In 2008, Miguel decided to move to Angola, Africa, where he has lived 6 years. This African experience, very close to his family roots, created a new cycle in his professional career, again becoming a significant presence in his paintings.
In 2014, Miguel moved from Luanda, Angola to Calgary, Alberta, where he is currently living. The exposure to a whole new Continent has already trigger a new inspirational process that is clearly distinct from his past experiences, though quite complementary.
Miguel Barros’ art sways between harmony and conflict. He avoids the easy mirroring of the reality, but his modern spirit makes an “interior world” come to surface, showing its true colours and an insightful look upon life and the surrounding entities.
Each year, Miguel profits from his full dedication to art, refining his technique as well bringing more of himself as each new work is presented. His work has grown through the years in artistic sensibility and has become a reference in several places around the World.
Miguel’s paintings clearly reflect a fundamental connection with Art. His work seems to be his soul handwriting a letter to the observer of his art, in a message full of emotions and intention that materialize into colours and apparently shapeless forms. If each one of us keeps an open spirit to Miguel’s work, it’s almost impossible to avoid a wave of warmth and pleasure coming from his paintings.
His work confirms Miguel’s talented skills specially the way he uses old techniques in an original way to convey is vision of the world. Miguel’s thoughts, ideas, concepts are full of passion and energy and are presented in a refreshing and clear way, though there is also a clear invitation to mediate on the mysteries of art and philosophy.
Miguel Barros' works are in several public and private collections in several countries around the world: Portugal, Angola, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Norway, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, United States, India, Lebanon and Mozambique, Australia.