Lupe Cunha

LUPE CUNHA started her career as a professional photographer. After 20 years running her own studio and stock library and supplying a wide range of clients: from magazines, to publishing, to designers, to industry. In 2000,she decided to take up again the Fine art work which she had explored back in 1970 but make it current. When she moved into professional photography painting had become a less popular art media - with conceptual work coming to the front. She now returns to Fine Art when painting is again undergoing a revival which promises well for her current work which in many ways works in the hybrid approach tipical of Postmodernism bringing together many mediums, in Lupe Cunha's case she is constrantly trying to bring together painting, photography and printmaking, working with light, image and colour to produce her final pieces which frequently have to do with memory and identity and the recreation of time, space and emotion.

Photography - gallery

Photography continues to be a major part of Lupe’s work. But now working in fine art she no longer concerns herself with producing work to a clients' brief, regaining the freedom to explore different aspects of this facinating media. She is currently exploring the world of perception and how the camera and the eye see in different ways. She is also extending her photography work to explore the world of video and installation work as other ways of being able to  communicate her ideas.

Painting - gallery

Painting has always been a great love in Lupe’s life, strongly influenced by her father, Luiz Cunha, an artist himself, she discovered painting in Chicago, USA, in the 1970. She has been strongly influenced by the techniques and ideas behind the American Expressionists as well as frequently looking back at the work of the French Impressionists in particualr Monet, Cezanne and later on the Orphism work of Robert Delaunay. She attributes influences in her work from most of the master colourists throughout the ages. This continues in her present work with research into more contemporary artists, having made a study of the work of artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Patrick Heron and Peter Lanyon, Katherina Grosse and Pia Friers, Liam Gillick and Chis Offili. Colour is her main interest and she explores it and relates it to emotion, memory and identity.

Printmaking - gallery

In photography, Lupe spent a considerable amount of time in the darkroom, exploring printing and toning techniques. With digital she has embraced image manipulation having trained to an advanced level in Photoshop. This she now brings into printmaking, exploring how to bring both image and colour together in printmaking, influenced by artists like Robert Rauchenberg.  Having first begun to explore etching she has continued to explore various techniques through collagraphy, monoprint, silkscreen and more recently lithography.