one step before happiness

In One Step Before Happiness, Jorge Da Cruz returns again and again to the image of the mountain. Once seen as sacred, these towering forms now carry different meanings—exile, ambition, decline. His drawings explore how landscapes that once felt divine have shifted, how the myths tied to them have faded.

This series unfolds around a central work, supported by a constellation of drawings and sketches that come together as one whole. Each piece offers a different angle, a different mood—fragments that, when seen together, form a larger, more layered reflection.

Charcoal feels like the right tool for this world—rough, raw, elemental. With it, Da Cruz builds wide, empty terrains. The mountains he draws don’t shine with glory; they sit heavy and still, shaped by time and loss. Their silhouettes hint at a former majesty, but that’s been worn down by erosion, memory, and silence. These aren't peaks to be conquered—they're places thick with meaning, haunted by what they once were.

In this imagined world, nature doesn’t speak with the voice of the gods anymore. The people who climb these mountains—restless, determined—aren’t looking for connection. They’re chasing something else. Their journey feels more like defiance than devotion. And the mountains show the cost: worn paths, disrupted ecosystems, a slow unraveling of meaning.

But this series doesn’t ask us to long for the past. There’s no romanticizing here. Instead, Da Cruz pauses in the in-between. His drawings hover in a space just before change—one step before happiness, or maybe one step before collapse. The title holds that tension.

What remains is a quiet urge to look closer. Even without their myths, these mountains still carry weight. They still ask something of us—not just to see them, but to think about what they mean now. Through this work, Da Cruz opens a space for reflection: on how we relate to the land, and on the delicate thread that still ties reverence to responsibility.