Consequently this is exactly what it did. Anyway, beyond the influence of my assumed personal tastes on my painting (which concerns only me, a priori), it sounds obvious that exploring the score while playing exactly the same notes as those already written by Brasilia's creator would have been pointless and dull. But one must reckon that most of the time, this evidence has not been so obvious to others. Objectively, the specific aspect of male nudity in my painting put off some enlightened amateurs of Niemeyer's art, and closed their doors to me. That is the way things are. On that topic, what more could I say that I have not already expressed in this site’s Outsiders chapter? I therefore have nothing to comment further on the embarrassment and the rejection that male plastique’s representation arouses sometimes in some minds, in the institutional Art world as anywhere else.

Anyhow, my painting upon Brasilia rapidly freed itself from this research on correspondences between human shapes of both sexes and the built form. Brasilia did not inspire me as much formally as it did symbolically, through its hidden meanings. And it is from those imaginary fantasies that my painting mainly fed itself. The process that led me to give a blood-coloured hand to the blue skinned man kneeling before the cathedral ("Cathédrale", 1997) has never been anything other than a reference to the blood-stained hand concrete sculpture (whose scar in that case shows the form of South America) created by Niemeyer in Sao Paulo's Latin America Memorial. It is with that process in mind that many of my paintings were created later, including those representing the architect himself, or Lúcio Costa, or Juscelino Kubitschek.
Giving a meaning to the shape, obvious or hidden, telling a story, challenging the viewer of the work : that is what draws me to painting. The beauty of the shape for the shape's sake, or the use of paint's material effects for their own sake, or even the art of colour for merely colour's sake have never really been my cup of tea.