“For the street, the imagery needs to be bold enough to carry its own weight… A gallery environment… allows breathing space, so the imagery has the room to be more delicate; it has nothing to fight against or withstand.” This insight from BerriBlue, a Polish/Irish painter and street artist based in Porto, summarizes the duality of her artistic expression, which shifts seamlessly between the robust public spaces and the intimate ambiance of gallery settings.
BerriBlue is celebrated for her large paste-ups and azulejos, traditional Portuguese ceramic murals, which have become familiar sights on the streets of Porto, Lisbon, and other major European cities. Her work deeply explores themes of mental health, personal identity, sexuality, and mortality, often delving into the darker aspects of existence with a fearless approach. Through her art, BerriBlue crafts a unique visual language, enriched with symbology that reflects her pan-European heritage, creating a personal folklore that resonates across cultures.
Her art feels like a conversation with the materials themselves. Their honest textures and impermanence reminding us that true beauty lies in the raw and unpretentious. She fosters a sense of open interpretation, believing, as she says, “Once I’ve put it out there, it no longer belongs to me. Whatever it means to you is correct.”
Photography by Olga Shatokha – instagram.com/olgs_olgs – shatokha.com
How do your Polish and Irish roots influence your art, especially now that you work mostly in Portugal?
My cultural identity is something that’s had a big impact on my life, especially as an immigrant / emigrant / pan-european. Leaving Poland for Ireland at the age of thirteen instilled a strong sense of nostalgia and melancholy, yearning for a childhood lost. And I often found myself idealising and romanticising that period.
My formative years were spent in Ireland, so culturally I do feel very Irish. The easy-going Irish attitude allowed me to approach difficult subjects without taking myself too seriously, and always retaining a sense of humour.
Artistically though, Portugal is where I feel I’ve had the space to grow. The people in Porto are very accepting and non-judgemental which I feel gave me the freedom to develop as an artist.
I’ve always had a love for azulejos – it was one of the things that drew me to Portugal in the first place – but I don’t think I’d have ever started working in ceramics if not for my time there. The Portuguese have a very particular aesthetic sensibility and almost inherent ease with which they approach that.
Now, after eight years in Portugal, I’m moving to Warsaw, to live in Poland as an adult for the first time. One thing I’ve realised recently is that my work does actually have a very Eastern-European feel, both in subject matter and that more calculated emotional expressiveness, so that early influence obviously never left me.
What attracted you to using raw materials like plywood and newsprint for your art?
For me, the process of creation is very important to the piece. The work has a life of its own, like a grown child, going out into the world. Working with raw, untreated materials feels more true to that process. It means I can start from scratch, and have some control and influence over every step. When I create an image, it shouldn’t feel like a clean visual representation of something else; it’s an object in its own right, and allowing the raw base material to show through really speaks to that, whether it’s paper, wood, or chacota (the bare ceramic tile).
Unprimed surfaces absorb paint and pigment in interesting, often less predictable ways. With paper and wood particularly, the material will also tend to change as it ages and matures. This sense of decay and impermanence feels right to me. It has a sort of vanitas to it.
With my ceramic work, there’s a different thing going on, since the piece could potentially last for decades or centuries. With azulejo pieces, I feel like I’m trapping the moment of creation in time. The brushstrokes and scratches into the surface are all sealed in, and preserved.
“Working with raw, untreated materials feels more true to the process. It means I can start from scratch, and have some control and influence over every step.”
You often explore deep themes such as identity and mortality. Could you share how your own experiences shape these themes in your work?
As with most artists I think, my own experiences will naturally inform the work I make. Having lived with borderline personality disorder, my mental health struggles have profoundly shaped my perspective on existence and self. I’ve now largely come to terms with my mental health, thankfully, so it’s less prominent as a theme. Now I find I’m exploring personal and cultural identity, womanhood, and the idea of home.
Mortality will always be present as a flipside to, or rather an integral part of, being alive. The visceral reality of life is something that my experience dealing with borderline really instilled in me, and I think that’s always a part of how I see the world.
I don’t try to be overt about these things in my work; there’s no particular message to convey. All of it just comes out instinctively, and I think it feels more real in that way. It also allows the viewer to take whatever meaning they want from it, shaped by their own particular context and experiences.
You’ve said that once your art is public, it no longer belongs to you. Can you share an instance where an audience interpretation of your work surprised you?
I’m not sure there’s one specific interpretation that surprised me, rather how strongly certain pieces seemed to resonate with people.
It’s one of the things I love most about street art. I’m essentially weaving myself into an environment. Because I’m not from there, sometimes not truly feeling from anywhere, I do it to be a part of that environment.
Spaces, particularly urban spaces, are like living organisms, fueled by the everyday interactions going on within them. People walk their dogs, go to work, come home after drinks; and my pieces exert their own little influence. Strangers have told me my work felt like an important part of their everyday life, and so took on some significance from that time. Important things like breakups, big life changes, can imbue an association in a piece, particularly if the imagery is something you can relate to in that moment.
All of my work is very sincere and personal to me, and I use my own symbology and visual language that I’ve developed over the years, but it’s built on very familiar themes and tropes. Blood, bones, animals, plants, have all featured across cultures and across times, in a way that allows us to understand and relate to each other and that shared experience.
“Mortality will always be present as a flipside to, or rather an integral part of, being alive. The visceral reality of life is something that my experience dealing with borderline really instilled in me.”
Do you approach creating art for street settings differently from how you create for gallery spaces?
Yes, to a certain degree. I feel like it’s all an extension of the same body of work, and some pieces from the same series might end up in either setting.
For the street, the imagery needs to be bold enough to carry its own weight. Often I’ll cut the piece to fit a specific wall, and the whole context around it needs to be considered.. With azulejos, you also have to consider their longevity. Paste-ups and murals could last months or years, but ceramics could be there for a lifetime, and that’s quite a responsibility when you’re imposing your image, a bit of yourself, into an urban environment. I try to consider the homes and businesses in the area. There’s also the chance that something will get taken down, so you have to weigh up the investment in time and materials.
A gallery environment is comparatively sterile, hyper-controlled, and so the work is decontextualized from its surroundings. It also allows breathing space, so the imagery has the room to be more delicate; it has nothing to fight against or withstand. Tone or subject matter doesn’t have to be a limiting factor, the piece can just be.
This series provides a glimpse into your home studio where you’re preparing for your upcoming solo exhibition. Could you share some details about your daily routine as you get ready for the exhibition?
My working routine is pretty much the same whether I have an exhibition or not, save maybe for the last moments, when I need to make space to lay things out and be curatorial, selective. A body of work usually takes me a month or so to build up, and is generally a product of the same theme or state of mind. Those pieces tend to belong together, but then you need to think about inserting balance and juxtaposition, without having something feel out of place.
As for my daily routine – usually I will just sit in the studio for an hour or two in the morning before doing anything. My environment is really important to me, so I need to have music, light, privacy, and a jug of strong green tea. Once I get into the right mindset, I’ll suddenly start producing, and the work just spills out of me, quite quickly. Sometimes I can get quite manic.Thats where both the best and worst work gets produced, and I need to judge when to stop and self soothe.
With azulejos, there is another cycle going on too – creating a set of work, preparing the pieces for the kiln, sending them off to burn, and then waiting to see how they turn out. When the pieces come back from firing, still hot and pinging as they cool down, I’ll lay them out, see if the kiln turned out any surprises. At this point, I need to let go of my preconceptions and avoid over-analysing. Sometimes I’ll break pieces apart and tesselate them in different ways, creating a new image like a ceramic collage. It’s where the real narrative of a piece finally emerges, often even surprising me.
The most important thing in life?
Headspace.
Artist: BerriBlue – instagram.com/berri.blue – berriblue.com
Photography: Olga Shatokha- instagram.com/olgs_olgs – shatokha.com
