Sandra Espírito Santo Marques, visual artist

Sandra Espírito Santo Marques was born on August 13, 1973, in Lisbon, Portugal. A naïf artist who works primarily with oil on canvas, she combines her background in Social Sciences and her postgraduate studies in Women’s Studies with a deep sensitivity to nature and the emotional world.

She identifies strongly with the naïf style, where she finds the freedom to translate emotions, memories, and dreams into an authentic and spontaneous visual language. For her, each painting is an extension of herself—“as if it were one of my own fingers,” she says—each one different yet equally essential. Her work emerges from her unique perspective and her profound respect for Nature, whom she considers her greatest teacher.

In her paintings, she creates vibrant worlds: flowers that seem to breathe, intense colours, and a living energy that seeks to express the deep love she feels for the Earth—the Mother of us all. It is to Her that she dedicates each of her works, drawing inspiration from the pulse of life, the strength, and the beauty of the natural world.

Her aesthetic, marked by movement, colour, and vitality, reflects the influences of artists such as Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, and Henri Rousseau, whom she admires for their chromatic intensity, expressive force, and celebration of life.

Over time, Sandra has recognized her own artistic evolution and a continuous desire for refinement. A perfectionist by nature, she admits to always feeling the urge to adjust a detail or breathe new life into a brushstroke whenever a canvas is nearby. After her first exhibition, she also began creating smaller-format works, making them accessible to those who connect with the energy of her creations and feel the same emotion within them.