Alex D. da Silva
East Bay Open Studios
3094 East 10th Street
May 31 - June 1, 2025
The first noticeable thing about Alex da Silva’s paintings are the stories inside them, the sense of ongoing history in his renderings that are at once abstract and representational. This is an artist who has a deep understanding of color and how they interact with one another, employing a soft, sophisticated palate to tell a tale. Although the tale in each painting isn’t explicitly told, it’s undeniably present. This mystery of what’s being communicated keeps the viewer’s eye moving, every element a feature of the narrative inside them.
The paintings that attracted me right away in da Silva’s small, sunny studio at Norton Factory Studios were two 3 foot by 3 foot works, each of which depicts a tall ship from centuries past. They’re complimentary, featuring the same ship from two different perspectives. In “Alta California,” a large Age of Discovery-era galleon sails upon a blue-gold sea superimposed on the west coast of Mexico aside an abstracted landmass I recognized as Baja California, the Sea of Cortez rendered in gentle shades of pastel blue. A pair of birds (condors?) perch in the branches of a tree that, like the ship, is also a superimposition. It’s a complex composition full of beautiful brushwork that’s quiet yet full of motion.
"Alta California,” 2025, and "The Big Sea Bird," 2025.
Though less bold, I found its counterpart, “The Big Sea Bird” more interesting, showing the galleon depicted from the shore, smaller, as though emerging out of the horizon. The trunk of a tree striped in browns, blues, and reds stands in the foreground. It anchors the eye, much like the tree in “Alta California.” It also features subtle lines resembling a nautical map, one of which has Tropicus Capricorni. painted in small red script just above it. A view from the shore, where the colors of the sky and flora are delicate and detailed even in their abstracted forms. This painting was my favorite, due in no small part to balanced use of negative space and perspective, the way in which it allows the viewer to be onshore, peering through the foliage.
I was intrigued. da Silva told me that one is a painting from the European perspective of the San Salvador (a ship commanded by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo that entered San Diego Bay in 1542), the other that of the indigenous Kumeyaay people, native to the southern California region. The title comes from the fact that the ship’s billowing sails were thought to be enormous sea birds when first spotted.
“I’m not an historian,” da Silva said. “I pick up information and riff on it; I need a little bit of a narrative. But it’s very loose.” His work, he told me, always begins with an historical narrative as a jumping off point; he finds a story and begins researching it before beginning a painting, fascinated as he is by history.
One example of this was a painting titled “Mauritshuis.” Hung a bit too high in the crowded space to view up-close, it depicts a grand mansion in shades of white and pink in the distance; in the foreground gorgeously painted tropical-looking flora. Almost lost within the plants is a group of seemingly nude people bunched together, some wearing red feathers. Johan Maurits van Nassau, a Dutch sugar baron and at one time the richest man in Europe due to the Brazil-to-Europe sugar trade, built the Mauritshuis in The Hague, da Silva explained, and sailed 11 indigenous people from the Recife area of northeastern Brazil for the opening of the mansion. da Silva said he learned about the 11 native Brazilians from W.G. Sebald’s novel Austerlitz. “They must have suffered so badly,” da Silva said. “From European diseases and the terrible weather in the Netherlands.” (The Mauritshuis is now an art museum which houses important paintings like Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring,” Carel Fabritius’s “The Goldfinch,” and numerous works by Rembrandt.)
Brazilian himself, many of da Silva’s paintings have Brazilian themes. He grew up in São Paulo before moving to California in 1999. His father, Quirino da Silva, who was born in 1897 and was 68 years old when Alex was born, was a painter and wrote an almost daily art column for Diários Associados. Alex painted alongside him as a child, learning to mix colors. He finds it amazing that his father was born in the 19th century, he in the 20th, his daughter Marina in the 21st.
I couldn’t help but think of the work of Milton Avery, one of my favorite 20th century artists. I was surprised to find that Avery isn’t one of da Silva’s influences (although he seemed flattered by the comparison), but recalling Avery’s creations piqued my curiosity about da Silva’s approach to material and technique.
He underpaints already Gessoed canvas, then adds washes of acrylics in warm red or light brown before marking a light design in charcoal. He then moves to very light oil washes until he gets a sense of where he’s going by using a dry brush and thicker paint, working on a painting’s details.
But the main material in his work is historicity. “I compose scenes that merge elements from different moments in time,” da Silva says. “The often-overlooked layers of our collective history.”
The multi-layered stories in da Silva’s works showcase not only his skill as a painter but also serve as a record of the global connections of our present.
East Bay Open Studios continues through the weekend of June 7 - 8.
