Tram Below the Sé, Lisbon
An oil on canvas completed in 2022, measuring 24 by 36 inches, depicting one of Lisbon's iconic yellow trams as it rounds the curve beneath the twin Romanesque towers of the Sé cathedral. The subject places the composition at one of the city's most recognizable junctions, where the everyday rhythm of the tram network passes directly in front of a structure begun in the twelfth century. That collision of the workaday and the ancient is the quiet tension the painting holds.
According to the curator's notes, the work was painted over six weeks in the studio rather than on location, which gives the piece a considered, distilled quality. Studio practice of this kind tends to compress observation into something more deliberate than plein-air work: the light, the geometry of the street, and the relationship between the tram's warm yellow body and the pale stone of the façade would all have been resolved through memory and reference rather than immediate sensation. The 24 by 36 inch format is a horizontal rectangle well suited to the subject, allowing the cathedral's towers to rise with authority while the tram occupies the lower register and carries the eye across the picture plane.