Alouette Ferreira is a South African oil painter exploring themes of connection, yearning and perception. Her style is soulful and smooth, capturing the essence and ‘the emotional resonance of a subject or object’ through her paintings, rather than a hyper-realistic interpretation of them.
Deeply moved by the feeling of longing, Alouette relates to and draws inspiration from a Portuguese word - Saudade - which refers to “a melancholic longing or yearning for something that does not and probably cannot exist, something other than the present”. She is passionate about how the medium of painting can capture the intangible and the invisible - what exists beneath the surface of what words can do justice. “I am defined by a desire to explore the unseen depths of human emotion, the silent spaces between what we feel and what we can express.”
Alouette strives to paint things as they are in a spiritual or metaphysical sense, not necessarily as the mind has been conditioned to understand them. This allows her work to be funnelled through a lens of feeling and a way of seeing that comes from and evokes emotion. Her subjects are perceived with an observational eye that explores the mysterious, sacred space between two living things - “the space where meaning, beauty, and connection begin”. Her paintings are a reflection of longing, both personal and universal.
Shades of blue play an important role in Alouette’s work, stirring reflection in the viewer by creating an atmosphere that is guided by depth and emotion. “[Blue] evokes what is just out of reach, what is felt but not fully grasped,” she says. Her creative energy is ignited by any beauty that awakens the experience of Saudade, which she feels is a source of both pain and hope. To her, this longing transforms the ordinary and illuminates the subliminal currents of a greater, unseen world.
“The desire to connect with something transcendent, to glimpse the “face of God” in the everyday, fuels my work.”
A collection of paintings titled Strange Creatures, which is described as ‘a portrait of a city through its creatures, its habitats, and its habits’ launches in our De Waterkant store on First Thursdays August 7th. The exhibition will run until August 31st 2025.
Visit us to explore Alouette's works!
Words by Boudica Collins
Images by Jono Wickwar [@harrfastfotos]
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