Artist Interview: Need for Disruption, Painting with Hands, and Anxiety as Inspiration

Curator, writer and educator William Huffman sat down with artist Paulo Senra to discuss the development of his practice and learn more about the upcoming exhibition Change, the Only Constant, taking place 29 August 2020 in Toronto’s Liberty Village.

HUFFMAN: I know that you started a creative practice later in your career and that you self-trained as an artist. So, perhaps a good place to start is when and how you came to painting?

SENRA: I started painting in 2007, so that’s 13 years ago now, and the whole thing emerged out of a couple of sessions with my therapist. At the time, I was in the process of coming out. I was out to some of my family members but not my mom and dad. As it happens, one of my aunts was getting married May of that year, and some of my family members asked me not to tell my parents I was gay until after the wedding, which meant I had to conceal things for about five or six months. So you can imagine what that half-a-year was like, really not great.

So back to the therapist. I was seeing him to help me out, to manage and navigate what I was going through in order to eventually come out to my parents. At…