"Picture a fantastic library, so real it seemed like a dream, full of autographs of José de Alencar himself and books on mythical families of our backwoods. It was there in the library of his grandfather, Oscar de Alencar Araripe (founder of one of sunny Fortaleza's first libraries) that Oscar Araripe grew up soaked in the Ceará culture and today recalls how amazed he was, as a young boy, in disbelief, at the sight of a curious and friendly chicken made of stone resting by the side of a wide dam in Quixadá.

Taking the reverse route of his grandfather and so many artists seeking recognition, Oscar left Rio de Janeiro, where he was born and had learned much about his painting through his fascination with kites, and went to baroque Minas Gerais, where he was concecrated himself to painting Brazil's richest architectural heritage and those beautiful green mountains of gold and silver. After several seasons in Asia, Europe and the USA, he left for the beaches of Bahia, and arrives at last in Ceará - the land of his grandfather, his mother and so many other distinguished forefathers - having won several national and international prizes on the way, noted and esteemed everywhere he has been.

In his studio in Porto Seguro, Araripe dedicated himself to painting Ceará without ever having seen it first-hand, bringing to life with his delicate and unique brush stroke, archetypal visions of our beaches, sand dunes, sierras and back country, proving that his encounter with our land is in fact a re-encounter - the return that redeems the simple desire to go back to where you have never been.

So, pictures no more: see for yourself this beautiful and unexpected "cearario", and travel through time and space like the artist himself. And if you can, try to see through the same eyes as the small boy in front of the stone chicken, letting yourself follow the most misty fantasy, or the most concrete reality, as if you too were seeing Ceará for the first time."

Cherlânyo Barros de Castro