A glasshouse lit from within, seen from the dark garden
5120 × 3413 px 112 layers 41 hours

Digital painter · Graça, Lisbon

Noa Ferreira

I paint gardens after everybody has gone home, in passes, and print them in editions of forty.

  • The palm house, half past one2026
  • Digital painting · archival pigment edition of 40

See the work Commission a piece

Statement

Painting in the dark, in passes

Layer 0

I paint gardens after everyone has gone home. By then the light is doing the interesting work: a lamp left burning in a glasshouse, a security light catching wet camellia leaves, the last blue half hour over an orchard nobody prunes any more.

Every file opens on the same scanned sheet, my grandmother's seed ledger from 1974, sitting at four percent under everything else. None of it survives in the finished painting. It only decides where I start, which is always warm, and where I work back to, which is always the dark.

Noa Ferreira Studio Lidia, Graça

Underneath, at eleven percent: Moths at the lamp, 2025.

Work

Nine paintings from the last two years

Every one printed on cotton rag in Lisbon, signed and numbered on the back.

Work 03

02 Moths at the lamp 2025

Night gardens

Medium
Digital painting
Size
50 × 33 cm
Edition
Edition of 40
Work 07

06 Fern room, one bulb 2024

Glasshouses

Medium
Digital painting
Size
40 × 60 cm
Edition
Edition of 40

All twelve works, with their files

Process

One painting, four passes

The same file at each stage, from the first dark ground to the last glaze.

Ground pass

01 Ground

The whole canvas goes down in one dark indigo so nothing is ever painted onto white.

6 layers · 3 hours

Flats pass

02 Flats

Every shape blocked in as one flat color, hard edged, with no light anywhere in the file yet.

24 layers · 9 hours

Light pass

03 Light

The lamps are lit and everything is modeled around them, still in raw unbalanced color.

48 layers · 19 hours

Grade pass

04 Grade

Glazes over the top until the color agrees with itself, then the file is flattened and named.

34 layers · 10 hours

One painting, four passes, 112 layers, 41 hours at the desk. The palm house, half past one, finished on a Tuesday in March.

The painter

Noa Ferreira

Noa Ferreira at the drawing display in her studio at night
4096 × 5120 px · 112 layers · 41 h The studio, half past two

I trained as a printmaker and spent four years pulling etchings before I admitted that the thing I loved about a plate was the layering, and that a file does the same thing without the acid.

Since 2016 I have painted almost nothing but gardens at night: the palm house at the Estufa Fria on a wet Tuesday, the orchard behind my aunt's house in Sintra, nine pots on my own roof in Graça. I work from photographs I take myself, badly, at eleven at night, and from a very long memory of my grandmother's greenhouse.

The studio is named for her. Lidia kept a seed ledger from 1974 that I scanned the week she died, and it has been the first layer of every painting since.

Based in Graça, Lisbon
Painting since 2016
Currently Two commission places open

Write to the studio

Record

Shows, prizes and collections

Solo exhibitions

  • 2026 Nothing Prunes Itself Galeria Sete Rios, Lisbon
  • 2025 After Hours in the Estufa Casa das Estufas, Lisbon
  • 2023 Nine Pots Rua Direita Projects, Porto
  • 2025 Prémio Estufa, first prize Câmara Municipal de Lisboa
  • 2022 Young Printmakers Bursary Fundação Correia
  • 2024 Winter residency, the glasshouses Quinta do Monte, Sintra
  • 2021 Studio in the walled garden Casa Aberta, Alentejo
  • 2026 Two works Colecção Marés, Lisbon
  • 2025 One work Fundação Correia

Group exhibitions

  • 2026 Painting Without Paint Fundação Correia, Cascais
  • 2025 The Long Blue Hour Kunsthal Noord, Rotterdam
  • 2024 Twelve Gardens Galeria Sete Rios, Lisbon
  • 2023 New Editions Print Fair Lisboa

Press

Written about

Público
The painter who has never owned a tube of paint
2026
Revista Fio
Twelve gardens, none of them real, all of them Lisbon
2026
It's Nice That
Noa Ferreira paints the hour after the gate is locked
2025
Umbigo
On editions, and why forty is the right number
2025
Time Out Lisboa
Five studios open this weekend in Graça
2024
Jornal de Sintra
A winter in the glasshouses at Quinta do Monte
2024

Commissions

What I take on, and when

Three kinds of commission, and how much room is left in each this season.

Fall and winter 2026 The spring book opens on 5 January.

A garden of your own

A painting of a garden, a glasshouse or one tree that matters to you, worked from your photographs and one long conversation about the time of day.

  • A call before anything is drawn, and a walk around the place if it is near Lisbon
  • Two composition sketches to choose between
  • One round of changes on the finished painting
  • A signed print at 60 cm, rolled or framed
  • The painting stays out of the edition list unless you say otherwise
From
From $2,400
Turnaround
8 to 10 weeks
Book
Open

2 places left of 4

Covers and editorial

Book jackets, magazine features and record sleeves that want a painting rather than a photograph, and want it to survive being cropped.

  • Roughs within a week of the brief
  • Artwork delivered at print size with bleed
  • The layered file kept on hand for your designer for a year
  • Usage written into the agreement rather than assumed
From
From $1,800
Turnaround
3 to 5 weeks
Book
Waitlist

One place left of 6

A series for one room

Three or more related paintings made for a single wall, printed at a size that suits the room and hung on the same afternoon.

  • A site visit with a tape measure and a light meter
  • A proposal with the whole set drawn small
  • Printing, mounting and delivery arranged with my printer in Alcântara
  • Installation anywhere in Portugal, elsewhere at cost
From
From $7,500
Turnaround
4 to 6 months
Book
Closed

No places left of 2

A place is held with a third of the fee and a start date. If the book is full I will tell you when it opens rather than keep you waiting on a maybe, and you are welcome to ask me to paint something I would never have thought of.

Start a commission

Prints

Editions

Each painting is printed forty times and then the file is closed.

  • The palm house, half past one

    The palm house, half past one

    Cotton rag, 60 × 40 cm

    Edition of 40 · 12 left

    $340

    Enquire

  • Moths at the lamp

    Moths at the lamp

    Cotton rag, 50 × 33 cm

    Edition of 40 · 29 left

    $290

    Enquire

  • Black water, four lilies

    Black water, four lilies

    Cotton rag, 60 × 60 cm

    Edition of 25 · complete

    Sold out

  • Lanterns in the old orchard

    Lanterns in the old orchard

    Cotton rag, 70 × 47 cm

    Edition of 20 · 14 left

    $520

    Enquire

  • Snow banked on the glass

    Snow banked on the glass

    Cotton rag, 50 × 37 cm

    Edition of 40 · 37 left

    $290

    Enquire

Printed on Hahnemühle cotton rag in Alcântara, signed and numbered on the back, shipped rolled in a tube within a week. Framed prints are collected from the studio in Graça, or delivered in Lisbon for the cost of the taxi.

Questions

The practical part

Commissions

Do you work from my photographs?
Yes, and they do not need to be good. Take them at the hour you want the painting to be, even if that means a phone in the dark at eleven at night, and send me twenty rather than two. What I need is the shape of the place and where the light sits, not focus.
Can I see it before it is finished?
You see two composition sketches at the start and the painting once, at the light stage, when changes are still cheap. I do not send progress shots every week: a painting at the flats stage looks like a mistake and nobody enjoys that.
What if I do not like it?
One round of changes is included, and in nine years three people have used it. If the finished painting is genuinely not what you wanted, you pay the deposit only and the work stays with me, unnamed.

Prints and shipping

What are the prints made of?
Archival pigment on Hahnemühle cotton rag, 308 gsm, printed in Alcântara by the person who has printed everything I have sold since 2019. They are rated at over a century behind glass, out of direct sun.
How long does shipping take?
A week inside Europe, two to three anywhere else, rolled in a tube. Framing adds a fortnight because the frames are made two streets away and he is slow and worth it.
What happens when an edition sells out?
The file is closed. There is no second edition in another size, no open edition, no postcards later. Twenty five or forty prints exist and that is all that ever will.

Files and rights

Do I get the digital file?
For a commission, no, unless you have bought a licence for it: you get the painting as a print and I keep the layered file, the way a painter keeps the canvas they did not sell. For editorial and cover work the licence is written into the agreement and says exactly where the image can appear and for how long.
Can I use a painting on my packaging or my website?
Ask, and it is usually yes for a fee. What I will not do is a licence that says any use, anywhere, forever, because that is not a price anybody can work out honestly.

Commissions

Tell me about the place

Seven lines is enough for me to answer with a price and a date.

To
Noa Ferreira · Studio Lidia, Graça, Lisbon [email protected]
Re
A commission, a series, or a print from an edition
Reply
Within two working days, with a price and the first date I could start
Your name
Where to answer
What it is
Where it will live, and how big
When you need it
What you have to spend
The place itself

Photographs are welcome once we are talking. Do not send them yet.