“The works by Maria Capelo oscillate between the open and closed. The viewer is confronted by the macro life in her paintings of the forest and dense landscapes and detects a notorious absence of inhabitants. Animal life could be noticed in the microscopic nature portrayed in the artist’s drawings that show details of flora and simultaneously allude as well the forms of animals and insects.”
–Tobi Maier

“This is by no means the reconstructing of a place or the reproducing of a previous image. It is thorough observation of nature , something that Maria Capelo has always done. It is from this observation that she adds and removes, reorders and modifies; establishing a world independent from the contingencies of the nature she observes. Maria Capelo does not offer these images to us. She forces us to conquer them; to find a place in the world for them; to do so with the same intensity that she does; forcing us to position ourselves in relation to them.”
–João Pinharanda

“Both as a draftsman and as a painter, Capelo has a sense for what the skin tells us, for how an outer shell, bark or surface can suggest an inner life. And how a detail can reflect a larger hole. She reads the landscape as an imprint of life; every slope or stone is the expression of something that happened beforehand.”
–Jurriaan Benschop