From scrimshaw to painting, engraving to illustration, and illustrated storybooks, Fátima Madruga has amazed her followers over five decades of art.

“A woman, an artist and a friend, who has collaborated in one way or another since the first day of our association,” explains MiratecArts’ artistic director, Terry Costa, at the opening event of the AnimaPIX festival. “Fátima Madruga is MiratecArts, she’s Pico, she’s Azores, it doesn’t matter where she is in the world. It is with great gratitude and satisfaction that, in celebration of her 50 years in the arts, I have the pleasure of awarding the MiratecArts Atlante Prize to this great woman, a prize that is a symbol of persistence and daring in the world of the arts.”

She was born in the parish of Santa Luzia in 1955. From 1973 to 1991, she focused on ivory engraving; from 1991 onwards, she dedicated herself more to painting and, since 2019, to writing with illustration.

Edgardo Xavier of the International Association of Art Critics described the artist in this way: “Fátima Madruga tells us about the world on a human scale and describes it; she tells us about another who is invisible, who enters the realm of dreams and is surreal; she tells us about herself as a sensitive, tender being, full of humanism, of love for the work that she wants to be perfect within her standards of demand and truth. We often take the island with us to other destinations and we are the voice of the mountain, the black of the igneous stones, the soft green, the blues that dress and change the water and the sky, the infinite that takes us, reduces us and exalts us, that teaches us to be an islander without being a foreigner wherever we are.”

MiratecArts Atlante Prize is awarded by the cultural association based on the island of Pico-Azores for the body of work of an artist who follows his/her passion without fear of being different. The Atlante Prize stands for persistence and daring in the art world. It is the responsibility of the artistic director of MiratecArts, with no specific award date or application from the artists. Fátima Madruga joins the list of illustrious recipients of the MiratecArts Prémio Atlante, which includes playwright and director Christopher Hampton, musician and composer Luís Alberto Bettencourt, filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues, Azorean craft twins Alzira and Conceição Neves, writer Urbano Bettencourt, multidisciplinary performer with an unmistakable voice Zeca Medeiros and illustrator and filmmaker Regina Pessoa.

AnimaPIX, the animation festival on the island of Pico, ended December 7, with activities, books, and films “for the child in all of us” at the Madalena Auditorium Library. http://www.miratecarts.com

From a MiratecaArts press release

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Cultures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance)  at California State University, Fresno