Vera Sampaio and Wilson Neto : Personal Botanical (Botânico Particular)

I am delighted to present for sale a selected group of embroidered works by Vera Sampaio, a fabric artist based in Fortaleza, Brazil.

These works, under the title Personal Botanical (Botânico Particular), are in fact multi-layered; a collaboration between two artists both based in the city of Fortaleza, North-eastern Brazil. Wilson Neto provides the drawn design, and Vera interprets it in thread. The work consists of jewel-like depictions of flowers and other botanicals, either real or imagined. Hybrid flowers and vines, imagined in the dreams and minds of the artists, exist alongside depictions of flowers beloved by us all, such as tulips and bromelias. Wilson Neto's designs may be changed, or added to by Vera, as her organic process of embroidery enters into the plane of her own memory,  on her own imaginative terms and in her own time. 

Vera’s work is exhibited and collected widely and can be found in many private collections

around the globe. Her technical prowess and love for the medium of embroidery, together with an instinctive playfulness, makes her work a joy to observe and collect. While being dreamlike and intensely personal, Brazil’s unique, complex and fertile mix of indigenous, African and European cultures are also reflected in these works, which depict both imagined and observed botanical elements, but often also mermaids, female warriors and other folkloric elements that are so alive and present in Brazilian culture. 

The use of thread as an artistic, narrative and symbolic medium has a very natural relevance to this work, as Vera works within the prehistoric tradition of weaving meaning and story with thread - from the pre-colombian khipu tradition, where strings and threads were used to record data and stories by Inca peoples (and many other peoples of the Central Andean region) to the most rarefied and commodified tapestries of late medieval Europe. Today, embroidery, tapestry and thread works have forged new contemporary languages in the work of Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks and Olga de Amaral, among so many others.

Wilson Neto has exhibited widely within Brazil and internationally, most recently at the Museum of the City of Skopje, Macedonia. His work brings together aspects of daily, urban experience with a fascination for the ancient. Ancient artefacts, symbols and mythologies fuse his work, whilst remaining connected to the contemporary. His joyful, abstract works, heavily influenced not only by ancient myth but also by the folk art tradition of Northeastern Brazil, as well as Julian Schnabel and Sigmar Polke, are to be found in various distinguished private collections. A major institutional show at Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste (CCBNB) is due to open later in 2026. 

The 'Personal Botanical' series has been shown most recently at Galeria Teo (São Paulo, Brazil) in 2024, with other gallery exhibitions planned. As Vera Sampaio continues to work into her eighth decade, each work becomes slower and more pensive as the rhythm and pace of her manual work changes, embuing another layer of preciousness and uniqueness to each work. 

Vera Sampaio's longstanding collaboration with Wilson Neto, one which blends and merges the notions of fine art and craft, has friendship and mutual creative freedom between generations at its heart.