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Small Animals Series, 2008å
Pen and ink on paper, 9 x 11”

In the Small Animals Series, Cabral brings together a love for flowing sinuous lines and a fantastic playfulness to create designs built from birds, fish and insect forms. Perhaps recalling Moorish influences in Spanish architectural decorations, these drawings emphasize curvilinear forms that simultaneously suggest Arabesque traditions and surrealism. Smooth tubular shapes swell to become fish or birds, taper into beaks, or stretch into eels. Through windows formed by these magical creatures, one occasionally spots a bird flying, a spider or snail crawling, even a butterfly. Graphic treatments along the surfaces of the drawing read as patterns of feathers or scales, or distinctive spots that identify unique animals such as beetles. Fanciful and alluring, Cabral’s drawings are highly imaginative evoking similar affections for attenuated line and elaboration of natural form in not just Spanish decorative tradition, but also in early modernist movements such as Art Nouveau.