My artistic practice is a combination of painting, drawing, sculpting, collage, and elementary engraving techniques such as monoprint and woodcut. Always looking for beauty in the unconventional and with a keen interest in recycling waste, don´t be surprised to find me digging through rubbish on construction sites or "treasure hunting" at the beach for objects and materials that catch my eye and meet some of my ideas.
I draw most of my inspiration from everyday life, people and nature ; but my earlier experiences in life, childhood memories, loss, and a consequent "joie de vivre" that coexists with a certain melancholy also tend to appear in many of my abstract paintings.
Making the most of the colour and texture of the materials, in this game of “hide and seek” that characterises my practice, the artworks often provoke in those who see them a certain sense of calm, peace and light; even though the under layers of most is the chaos of the emotional storms natural to human experience.
Mariana Horgan (b. 1985, Lisbon) is a Portuguese artist working in abstract painting, sculpture, and monotype. She studied at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual in Lisbon (2019) and completed Painting and Relief Printing at the Art Academy in London (2022). Her work spans large and medium-scale canvases and works on paper, building layered surfaces with acrylic, powdered pigment, and washes, often incorporating materials such as ash, soil, graphite, charcoal, and fabric fragments. Her muted palette, punctuated by moments of chromatic intensity, reflects a tension between gesture and revision, control and improvisation. Rooted in the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, her work channels its emotional immediacy through a contemplative lens — echoing the restrained, memory-laden gestures of Cy Twombly.