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In art, as in many other areas of life, secrets are golden. Whether in music, films, or paintings, the depth of meanings and intentions expressed by the author in his signature pieces isn\u2019t always a crystal-blue narrative. There are songs requiring a prolonged listening; films begging for a rerun; paintings imposing a profound contemplation. Scrutinising these works of art, however, gives birth to countless written lines and debated judgements seeking to unveil the authors\u2019 mysterious and enigmatic life experiences that may be hidden in their art. And few have been able to keep their secrets so perfectly enfolded on their body of work as Dame Paula Rego.<\/span><\/p>\n Born on January 26, 1935, the 82-year-old Portuguese painter, who\u2019s one of the most important figures in contemporary art, has always guarded her personal life journey. She\u2019s truly a closed book, both for her audience but also her family and close friends. Her secrets would only be unveiled through her paintings, which has been a sort of safe universe for the artist born in Lisboa. Rego\u2019s cathartic drawings of overflowing emotions bluntly exposed her inner-restlessness and <\/span>took<\/span><\/i> her on a trip through memory lane to the most remarkable and enduring places and events of her life. Among those places \u2013 both physical and emotional \u2013, no other had such a strong a deep impact in Rego\u2019s life and artwork as the village of Ericeira.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s likely that Dame Paula Rego doesn\u2019t recall the first time she stepped foot in Ericeira \u2013 she was yet a little baby. But what\u2019s certain is that the years she spent in the village are alive and well in her heart. It was between 1957 and 74, a stretch of time juxtaposing the darkest and happiest moments of her life \u2013 from her love story with the British painter Victor Willing to the birth of her three children; from her arts emancipation to her father\u2019s death, her husband\u2019s illness, depression and the stroke of mercy that was giving away her adored Quinta Figueiroa Rego, in Ericeira, right after the Democratic Revolution. A series of episodes that were (finally!) documented in <\/span>Paula Rego: Stories and Secrets<\/span><\/i>, a film directed by her son Nick Willing revealing Rego\u2019s life story and the pivotal relationship with Ericeira in her career.<\/span><\/p>\n And it was from London, the city where she\u2019s been living for more than four decades, that Nick Willing, the men behind the lens, spoke with AZUL<\/a> and unearthed Dame Paula Rego\u2019s intrinsic connection with Ericeira.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n On previous interviews about your mother, you said that she was always a mystery for you. Now after all the conversations you had with her for the documentary, do you feel she\u2019s still a mystery?<\/b><\/p>\n Well, she’s still a little bit of a mystery, yes. I’m closer to her than I’ve ever been before and she told me things that she never did before. I know her better now than ever. But it’s not so much that she’s still a mystery, it’s more that her work is still somewhat an enigma. But it’s clearer now to me, now I understand a lot better what it is to be her, to be an artist, to be Paula Rego, and why she’s made those choices in her life. This is a big thing for me, understanding the way she’s treated her family, the people around her, and me.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n What is it that you now see in her art that felt like an enigma for you before?<\/b><\/p>\n I always thought I knew her work better than a lot of people who were experts about her art, and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to make this film. Academics and experts who seem to know a lot of her work write about it, but I\u2019d read them sometimes ask my mother, ‘what the hell are these people talking about’. She’d say, ‘I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter’. ‘They have their own ideas and that’s what’s important. It doesn’t have to be what I’m doing, it can be what they think I’m doing, it’s just as valid’. That’s one of the things I’ve always found quite funny. She says that if people find their own story in her pictures, then that’s very good too. But what I was interested in finding out was her story, why she did it, and what were the secrets behind the paintings. What I discovered was that she picks a story and starts working on it, but then the story changes and she starts doing all sorts of other things. She doesn’t know why at first, only then she realises actually it’s to do with something very personal in her life she hasn’t yet come to terms with or that she feels she needs to explore unconsciously. That’s what I would call the secret in the paintings that she doesn’t ever talk about. She doesn’t let people know what it is, but it’s what gives the picture its power. Actually, the things that are authentic, intimate and personal are what give your work its power. It’s true with every artist, whether they are a painter or a musician.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Right at the beginning of the documentary, she says she needs to go back to a place she knew as a child to find the background of her paintings. Would you reckon this place being Ericeira?<\/b><\/p>\n Oh yeah. Oh my god, Ericeira is in everything. Do you know the movie \u201cCitizen Kane\u201d**? You know, Rosebud is the thing that Kane [the main character] is always trying to go back to, which is the thing in he’s childhood that he never quite had. Ericeira is my Rosebud \u2013 I grew there until I was 18 -, and in a sense, it’s also a little to my mother. Ericeira was the place that she loved being in as a child and the place where she had the happiest time in her life. It’s the place that, as a child, she remembers most fondly, to where she moved to when she first got together with my father, had her first daughter and where she established herself as a great painter. Ericeira is perhaps the most powerful memory that she has in her life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Did she tell you about the first time she visited Ericeira?<\/b><\/p>\n When she was a tiny little baby, her parents had come to England so her father could finish his studies at Marconi [a former telecommunication\u2019s company]. In those days, you couldn’t go back and forth, there were no planes like there are now, so you’d [drive to France and] take a ferry [in the English Channel] \u2013 plus, there was the II World War right around the corner. So she had two years living with her grandparents in the Quinta [Figueroa Rego] when she was very little. That’s why i say Ericeira was like her Rosebud, because it was the most happy place of her childhood and where she would grow up.<\/span><\/p>\n Eventually her parents came back and when she was 3-years old, she got diagnosed with Tuberculosis and the doctor said she had to move closer to the sea. So they built this house in Estoril to where they moved, but she always hated the house. We still have that place, I was there recently. It\u2019s a lovely house, but it has all sorts of different feelings. I was also brought up in Estoril, but we would always go back to Ericeira on weekends and the summers.<\/span><\/p>\n Paula Rego with her father, Jos\u00e9 Figueiroa Rego, and her mother, Maria de S\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 Paiva.<\/p><\/div>\n Ericeira was the place that she loved being in as a child and the place where she had the happiest time in her life.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The period in which you and your family spent most of the time in Ericeira is somehow extensively depicted on the documentary. I imagine you also hold Ericeira very dearly.<\/b><\/p>\n Ericeira is a really strong memory for me, I spent a lot of time there until I was 18 years old, when we then had to sell the Quinta. The old films [in the documentary] where shot by me while a teenager in the 70s. On that sequence in Ribas, praia do Sul [South beach], and the Mil Regos [stronghold], I was trying to create Ericeira\u2019s atmosphere at that time, but then I got really stuck. So I remembered the song “Naufr\u00e1gio” of Am\u00e1lia Rodrigues<\/a>. The two guitars gave that feeling of sadness, longing, <\/span>saudade<\/span><\/i>, excitement, and sexiness. The thing I remember about Ericeira is that it was a very sexy place, and different from anywhere else in Portugal.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Those weekends and holidays in Ericeira were particularly productive for Dame Paula Rego? How was the daily life at the Quinta?<\/b><\/p>\n It was a very evocative time, very powerful, with the terrible wine <\/span>carrasc\u00e3o<\/span><\/i> that we all found delicious [risos]. I’d go buy it with a <\/span>garraf\u00e3o <\/span><\/i>[small sort of wine barrel made of plastic], it costed like nine <\/span>escudos<\/span><\/i> [the Portuguese currency at the time] per litre. We\u2019d all have purple diarrhea and green teeth, but we’d all drink that stuff like it was Ribena [laughs]. It was a very magical time.<\/span><\/p>\n A lot of important British artists like Mike Andrews and Peter Snow would come to the Quinta and sometimes stay the whole Summer just to paint. It became a kind of summer camp for them. They were fascinated by Ericeira\u2019s light – something my mother never really used. She\u2019d bury herself in her studio in the <\/span>adega<\/span><\/i> and explore her inner landscape. So we’d have these amazing parties where people would be drinking <\/span>carrasc\u00e3o <\/span><\/i>the whole day. It was like an artists\u2019 sanctuary.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n That sort of creative yet natural environment inspired your mother\u2019s art?<\/b><\/p>\n The fuel for her work has always been what’s inside of her, very rarely what’s outside. Her experiences are always inside her and she explores them. They are all touched by people and places and all those things magic, but when she’s painting what pops up in her work is her childhood or a place like Ericeira. But what she’s really doing [in her paintings] is going back to a feeling or relationship that she’s trying to understand better.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n And besides the Quinta, what other places did she like to go to in Ericeira?<\/b><\/p>\n She loved dancing in Ouri\u00e7o with my father. It was always hard for me to get in, but my parents and sisters would go there often. She’d also go eat in places like P\u00e1tio dos Marialvas, opposite to Caf\u00e9 Xico. We <\/span>lived<\/span><\/i> in Xico, that was our HQ in Ericeira. We had lots of family in Ericeira, like our cousin Ana Maria and <\/span>av\u00f3 <\/span><\/i>[granma] Bit\u00f3. Her huge house is overlooking the Ribas and my mother would go there a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019d go to the Mil Regos beach [today known as Empa] every single day. All those pictures of her half naked on the beach in the documentary were filmed in Milregos. In those days, you couldn’t drive there, you had to walk over the rocks. We’d go in the morning, picked the shells off the rocks and cooked in a pan for lunch. When she was little, she would go mostly to praia do Sul with her parents, even before the hotel was built.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A lot of these places come up on her paintings. If you look at one of her latest, \u201cThe Last King of Portugal<\/a>\u201d, you see the king roawing away from the Ribas, because that’s where he apparently got the boat to go to Gibraltar and then come to England. He sort of ran away from Ericeira and I think she did that [painting] remembering how she had to runaway herself.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Paula](\"https:\/\/www.ericeiramag.pt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/paula_rego_com_os_pais.jpg\")
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