Breviary

A Breviary is a summary of a larger work. It can also be a memory book or notebook. In this case, Tamara Feijoo’s Breviary is a small collection of pieces that function as pictorial samples and experiments. These selected spaces of thought – studio essays, recurring motifs, and discarded elements – shape a personal imagery that serves as a condensed reflection of her entire artistic journey.

This particular compendium features both drawing and painting – her primary means of expression – in works where the support also plays an important role. The artist repurposes old papers, marked by the passage of time, which she sources from notebooks and folders she has collected over the years, transforming them into the foundation of her work. Wooden panels, too, are a recurring medium in this exhibition.

Her innate precision often lends her to compositions where she combines layered planes with explorations of the pictorial material itself.

In her earlier work, Tamara Feijoo tended to depict nature as an invasive force in all its forms. Over time, however, this presence has softened and been refined, leading the artist towards a certain essence of painting – one attuned to the inherent properties of the medium, its rhythms, and its methods.

Alongside nature, the passage of time has become a central theme in her work, as she explores the traces and echoes it leaves on living beings and organic matter. In her own words: ‘Human beings, nature, and the passage of time are the three key pillars of my artistic practice. What began as an interest in nature as an uncontrollable force – one that escapes our dominance and colonises space, altering the environment we consider our own – has gradually shifted into an exploration of the subjective construction of landscape: landscape as a creation of our gaze, shaping who we are and how we feel.’

Breviary continues along the path begun by Tamara Feijoo in her project DOODVEW, in which she revived a Dutch term used to describe the opaque layer of paint that produces mid-tones. It was a modest form of painting, created with pigments mixed into an aqueous emulsion, onto which fine glazes of bright and translucent colours were applied, combined with an oily medium. The presence of this initial opaque layer was responsible for providing greater depth and realism, allowing light to be reflected in a more lifelike manner.

Building on this idea, Tamara Feijoo’s Breviary centres on painting as a process where stripping back and subtraction become fundamental, offering an inquiry into what underpins painting itself as its primary framework. The artist turns her attention to an intimate and contained space – one of direct engagement with pigment, substrate, pictorial strokes, backgrounds, and the interplay of colours – in pursuit of glaze, texture, and the material’s own inherent quality.

Breviary suggests an understanding of painting as process, as something whose artistic power lies well before the final result.  For Tamara Feijoo, everything in painting matters. Even the chosen supports shape the quality of the work: in this case, small wooden panels and old papers, carefully treated by the artist herself to achieve the desired patinas. Her painting process also incorporates a preparatory layer made with a half-chalk mixture of Spanish white, linseed oil, rabbit-skin glue, and pigments that lend depth and form the structural base of the artwork.  This type of priming, known as ‘dead colour,’ serves as a base for the final application of paint and the construction of images.

In Breviary, Tamara Feijoo once again looks to the Flemish masters for inspiration.  The colour palette is dominated by earthy pigments, notably caput mortuum, which those masters often used to depict cardinals’ robes. This special reddish-brown pigment undergoes a remarkable transformation: when applied over the primed surface, it shifts to a deep purple before returning to its original state as the paint dries. Alongside these tones appears verdigris, the greenish shade derived from copper oxide and traditionally used to bring skies to life. Tamara Feijoo carefully considers the symbolic dimension of colour, ensuring that it functions as a signifier within the composition. Through these hues, Breviary hints at the artist’s return to figuration, incorporating imagery that has accompanied her throughout her artistic journey. Sketches of eyes, plants, mantles, studio fragments, small discards – elements that recreate her poetic and personal universe.

In Tamara Feijoo’s work, painting once again escapes itself, restoring its representational capacity but, above all, evoking a deeply personal space: the studio, understood as a laboratory, a playground of possibilities, from which a universe is reimagined.

Mónica Maneiro

SHORT BIO

A graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo, Tamara Feijoo has earned recognition in nearly every major art award dedicated to the promotion of art in Galicia: a ‘Certamen Novos Valores’ Grant from the Pontevedra Provincial Council, the Acquisition Prize at the Isaac Díaz Pardo Visual Arts Competition, a Creative Arts Abroad Grant from Gas Natural Fenosa, and the Julián Trincado Prize at the 12th Gas Natural Fenosa International Art Exhibition.

She has participated in the emerging art fair JUSTMAD through her gallery Marisa Marimón, and her work is held in major collections, including the CGAC Collection and DKV Collection, among others.