The Whale, 2026

Oil on jute

40 x 50cm

Matilde de Oliveira Roque is a Portuguese artist based in London, UK. For ‘The Whale’, there was no reference image. It was made using 8 black and 3 white pigments, layered on primed jute, tough and gritty and resistant. Black pigment serves as limitation as well as depth. Thinking about the monstrous whale that swallows the hero in the story of Pinocchio, and how this image from childhood has remained in our minds. The belly of the whale is both womb and tomb. In going in, there is an encounter with the ‘shadow self’, and in the escape there might be a rebirth, or death of the ego. Matilde’s paintings centre on the manipulation of oil paint playing with the tension between empirical description and a more open calligraphic quality. Leaning on methodical layering of pigment and texture, in tension with the intuitive sensibility of line, she claims a visual language with blurred boundaries between abstraction and figuration.

Photos // Danae Ripley