...I have always felt like an abstract painter. Abstraction has always been my reference. European and, later on, Brazilian modernism might both be references for my work. Especially one painter, Tarsila de Amaral, was very influential. She started in Brazil and mixed all the knowledge she acquired in Europe with her culture in Brazil. It was also what she did: first the real link was color. It is as if it is color what makes everything happen. I could not be geometric in the way of using cubes, squares, rectangles or triangles, my work cannot think only in terms of geometry and geometric shapes. I needed elements that I could develop and use like the shape of a flower representing some motif. But the shape of this flower is less important than its color; even if I had a good, beautiful shape of a flower, it would never work unless I had chosen the perfect color. (RES Art World/World Art, No. 2, May 2008, p. 4)