Gis Mari: The Patience of Energy

In an age dominated by speed, reproduction and instant visibility, Gís Marí stands firmly on the opposite shore. Born in The Netherlands in 1991 and now based in Portugal, Marí is an abstract expressionist painter whose work resists urgency, rejects compromise, and insists on time as both material and meaning. His large scale oil paintings do not seek to decorate walls; they demand physical presence, attention, and emotional openness from the viewer.

Gís Marí, atelier Figueira da Foz. Photo by Gonçalo Ribeiro.

Marí’s path to painting was not linear. Initially studying psychology in Leiden, he was drawn less to academic certainty than to the questions that linger between answers. As a student, he found himself dreaming, abstracting, and mentally drifting traits often discouraged in formal education, but later revealed as essential to his artistic language. Psychology, particularly the concept of empathy, became a lasting influence. For Marí, art does not emerge from the self alone; it is an accumulation of impressions, conversations, observations, and emotional exchanges with the world.

Painting gradually took over his life. His student apartment, with its white walls, became an improvised studio where long nights were spent experimenting with the medium of paint—its structure, its resistance, its dialogue with the canvas. By his early twenties, Marí left university behind to fully commit to painting, renting his first atelier at Amsterdam’s NDSM Wharf. Yet even there, the accelerating rhythm of the city felt increasingly incompatible with his need for contemplation. Amsterdam’s gentrification, speed, and market-driven atmosphere pushed him southward.

Private exhibition Casa Albuquerque, with 'Meu céu é o teu'. Photo by Luís Brandão.

After working in Porto for several intense years, living and painting in an old industrial store, Marí eventually settled in Figueira da Foz, a coastal town where ocean and river converge. His current studio, just minutes from the sea, places him in constant dialogue with nature. Water, in particular, has become a recurring influence, not as imagery but as energy: tides, movement, reflection, rhythm. His recent series inspired by the Mondego River sought to capture the shifting force of ebb and flow rather than its visual likeness.

Marí’s working process is defined by patience and risk. Using thick oil paint layered over months or sometimes years he allows chemistry to dictate tempo. Each layer must dry before the next can respond. This enforced waiting is not an obstacle but a collaborator. A painting becomes a conversation: paint is applied, erased, repainted; the artist listens as much as he acts. Every inch of the canvas must contribute to the whole.

A vida é abalar o equilíbrio, 2022-2023. Oil on canvas, 201x253cm, inv.GM23-10.

This rigor explains one of Marí’s most uncompromising principles: he destroys works that do not meet his standards. In abstraction, where there is no reference point and no comparison, the artist must invent his own rules. A painting is finished not when nothing can be added, but when any additional gesture would diminish it. Only then does Marí sign the work, a moment he describes as cutting the umbilical cord. The painting is born, no longer his, now free to confront the world on its own terms.

Central to Marí’s philosophy is the idea of the artist as a messenger between two worlds. Drawing on the figure of Hermes from Greek mythology, he describes his role as traveling between the inner and the common world, translating personal experience into a language others can feel. The longer and more solitary the journey, the more unique the result. This is why his practice often unfolds in silence and isolation, demanding full concentration and emotional endurance.

Despite his preference for physical encounters with art, Marí acknowledges the inevitability of the digital world. Online platforms serve as pathways, not destinations. For him, the true encounter happens when a viewer stands before the painting seeing its scale, sensing its texture, even smelling the oil. Only then can the work fully transmit its energy.

Exhibition view, Gís Marí Paisagens do inefável. With 'Sunlight dances on the waves during sunset in Figueira'. Photo by Luís Brandão. 

That transmission is Marí’s ultimate goal. He does not seek a specific reaction. Tears, joy, anger, silence all are equally valid. What matters is transformation. If the viewer leaves the encounter changed, even slightly, the painting has fulfilled its purpose.

“Panta Rhei,” he says—everything flows.

In a world increasingly shaped by algorithms and acceleration, Gís Marí’s work reminds us that depth still requires time, that energy can be stored in silence, and that painting when treated with seriousness, humility, and devotion remains one of the most powerful ways to encounter what it means to be human.