MARIA JOSÉ CABRAL is a Portuguese painter based in Lisbon, known for her vibrant, layered work. Her practice stems from the need to translate internal images into painting: memories, imagination and fragments of dreams that, once brought to the canvas, never fully coincide with what was remembered or imagined. It is in that gap that the work is built, an intermediate space between presence and absence, where landscapes, figures and atmospheres emerge in constant transition. Her paintings inhabit this liminal territory, vivid and dense, yet suspended in a time that is neither quite reality nor dream.

There’s a real power in colour. It shapes mood and it has become my gateway to the world.