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Layza Norbim

"I have always been around painting. My parents are painters and my conviviality with them is very intense. Of their five children, I am the only one who follows their path. I began to paint at the age of eight because I didn't want to leave my father's side. He is Evandro Norbim and I wanted to do what he did on the canvas.

"Color and design enchanted me. I always asked my father to let me to paint on his canvases, but I always heard 'not yet.' I asked him so many times that one day he gave me a brush, a small watercolor and a bit of canvas to play with. Designs flowed through my mind and my reference turned back to his paintings in the naïf style. He was surprised with my finished canvas and its combination of colors and forms. His eyes expressed a mixture of happiness, pride and surprise, and he started to let me help him with his paintings. He painted the canvases and left a small detail for me to do. I felt accomplished. I breathed practically the same air that he did. I was his shadow in the studio or in the Ipanema art fair where he offered our works for sale.

"The years went by and my paintings gained more of my own personality's colors and forms. I always looked for simple, minimalist forms with well-defined line and colors. At first, I didn't exhibit my work, nor did I think about selling it. But after my father insisted a lot, little by little I began to show my works at the fair and people's interest surprised me. They wanted to buy the canvases and wanted to see more work in the same style. Little by little, my courage grew and in 2004 I made my work available to the public and now, with great pleasure, through Novica.”