Details from a Washington row house inspired Santos’ mandala. (Courtesy of Leticia Santos)

By DCist contributor Vincent Acovino

Leticia Santos moved from Sao Paulo, Brazil to the District just two years ago, and was struck by the differences and the similarities between the major cities. Sao Paulo, the most populous city in the Americas, lacks the tropical palette one expects from Brazil, a color palette in which the artist found solace. Instead, it was an urban metropolis coated in grey—not unlike parts of Washington, in fact.

“With all its colorless buildings and corporations, Sao Paulo is known as a grey jungle,” Santos says, as she spoke to DCist from her studio space at Palette 22, an Arlington restaurant that offers a space for artists to create and showcase their work in exchange for a modest commission. Her quaint work nook felt like a haven from the noise and turmoil of Washington. “There’s a feeling of loneliness you get from being in a big city. So it’s good for me to break from that for something that’s not so metropolitan.”

Like so many artists, Santos chose her medium—the traditional mandala painting—as a means of escaping from an uncomfortable state of mind. “I was dealing with a lot of anxiety before I moved here,” Santos says. “People think of mandalas as a natural movement. I started with that motion and these geometrical paintings, and felt the calming effects.”

Her fascination with the mandala has a lot to do with its basis in geometrical symmetry. Before she was painting mandalas, she was drawn to patterns and order. Much of the early work she was exposed to dealt with more abstract representations of geometrical forms. “When I was in Brazil, I was introduced to artists like Miro and Picasso. I had a close friend who made abstract geometric paintings…I started getting familiar with her artwork. I just started sitting in my apartment and making these circular illustrations. It’s the idea of symmetry that attracts me most,” She continues, “I was always seeking some sort of order or perfection in life. Since I couldn’t find that, I started searching for it in the form.”

In D.C., she started seeing this symmetry everywhere—primarily in the historic row houses that define some of Washington’s historic residential neighborhoods. Santos saw intricate patterns in the architectural designs that most residents take for granted, and she incorporated them into her work.

Santos’ recent paintings are a love letter to a colorful, lively city that stands in contrast to the glass office buildings and governmental buildings that most people think of when they think of Washington architecture. Santos stands up for underrepresented buildings, the row houses of Bloomingdale, Mount Pleasant, Petworth, and Columbia Heights that come to life in her work.

People in the local creative community may find it hard to be inspired by the area’s suffocating majority culture. Through an ancient form, a tropical color palette, and a clear love for the place she now calls home, Santos’ work tells us how easy it is to find beauty in the city’s finer details.

You can find Leticia Santos and her work at Palette 22 in Arlington and on Instagram.