Man, artist that he may be, is always Himself an his Circumstance. And Pompeu does not evade this rule. In his painting of «abstract imagery», the Portuguese North, recreated a thousandfold, appears brightly coloured in its greens, ochre’s and blues, and also in the universal red or countless reds of a sunset sinking into the blue of the infinite ocean.

The themes of his present paintings express life's syncretism, its emotions, even the ecologism of the living things complex way of being in nature.

His painting takes our imagination by the hand, and as trusting children, we are carried to an enchanted world, of fantasy, dreams, surprises and quests! Thus, in it, a man — god and devil — plays our favourite music at the piano. In an instant it carries us to a ritual dance of birds, perhaps in pantheistic honour of the flower goddess that feeds them. From their flight we are led to the young girl, whose fluttering dreams are, however, anchored to generous mother-earth, expressed in the source of life which is suggested by a multiplicity of breasts. Along this course of gentleness and enchantment, with its doors open to beauty, we cast our dreams in Pompeu's pictorial expressions. And at the end of this neverending course we feel that God also gave Pompeu the key to «the doors of a World of Wonder»

February, 1994

In Catálogo da Exposição «Horizonte de Liberdade» de Orlando Pompeu, na Fundação Eng. António de Almeida. Janeiro / Fevereiro de 1997