Most of the art you see in galleries is by art school graduates, people who have dedicated their lives to the history and pursuit of their craft. So it’s easy to forget that art is for the people. You don’t have to have a BA in painting and a career as an underpaid studio assistant, you don’t have to understand art speak, or feel like you belong in the newest, hippest galleries; sometimes, like Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias (1940-2011), you can just be an admin worker for the Brazilian federal railroad company who loves to paint, and that’s just as valid.
Ozias only started painting in his 40s, but it took over his life. He painted endlessly, voraciously, with bright primary colours, flat perspective, and simple, blocky figures. It’s gloriously, obviously and brilliantly untrained. He depicted religious rituals of rural Brazil, workers panning the rivers, tilling fields and cutting down trees. There are pastors giving sermons, angels visiting believers, he painted streets filled with revellers and the swirling costumes of carnival, ranks of twirling dancers and countless blank faced spectators. They are gorgeous, frenetic, simple, deeply attractive paintings.
Ozias gave himself fully to painting, and that’s why seeing these little paintings is such a nice visual gift. You could see these as portraits of everyday Brazilian life; incredibly joyful, hectic, colourful depictions of how these people worshipped, celebrated and lived. But more than that, they’re proof of how art doesn’t and shouldn’t belong to a small group of people. It belongs to everyone.