The story-telling painter

The story-telling painter. Miguel intertwines the imaginary as colour mixed brush strokes. Curses from Algarve, Creole tales and fishermen’s stories, all are found in his bag. He works as an educator for reading and book-learning along the neighbourhoods, penitentiaries, libraries, schools, streets and boats. Miguel Horta is a painter who writes and draws his books spurred by the blown Levant through the lagoon and on the hardened westmolded escarpments. Since childhood he found heart by the sea and in all her inspired liars on board. But more important than the fishes and the beasts below are all the people with their stories; and thus, he strove into the heartland to tell of other lives one hears in his illustrations and tales, shared both in Portuguese or Cape-Verdean Creole. Such concern with the other, bounded to the societal impact of story-telling, might have been what transformed him into an effective mediator for book-learning and reading, credited by those who harbour his educational workshops in libraries or work with him directly in interventions on situations of cultural or social exclusion. Further, Horta has shown an important work on oral narration and mediation for reading in students and communities with special educative needs. The high tides have left us with this story-teller mediator on the sands of our beach, as a castaway from the modern world.

He narrates in Portuguese and Cape-Verdean Creole.

Adapted from a text of José Barbieri (Memóriamedia)