The paintings “Stories I want to tell” began in 2011, during the artistic residency I participated in at the Carpe Diem Institute in Lisbon. The proposal was to translate into painting my perception of the city, its streets, gardens and how spaces were related to light. As a painter, capturing the luminosity was what interested me the most, and the light of Lisbon was of prime importance for this process. In order to paint the scenes I saw, I needed to capture them in order to immortalize the composition of the moment. That’s how I started to use photography as a means in the process, and I chose to shoot with a Polaroid camera due to the impossibility of manipulating the image. The format and framing of these photographs ended up directly interfering with the paintings, thus revealing the moments captured by my gaze. I try to make the paintings always in the same format so that the differences and affinities of each moment are evident. This process extends to the present day and, in a way, has also become a diary where I reveal my poetic construction. It’s a series with no end in sight. Gabriela Machado