painting course. There she met Jorge de Oliveira, whom she later married. By the end of the third year she decided to start working and suspended the course. Career She lived in Pinhal de Leiria from 1944 to 1945, during which she taught drawing at the Industrial School of Marinha Grande. During this time she interacted with local workers, and went on to draw a series of drafts based on her interactions, called “Meninos operários” (Child workers). Many of them were drawn on packing paper. In this series she pictures the gestures and tired faces of the children wrinkled by dehydration while working in the nearby glass factories. In 1952 she finished her Painting course with a thesis (an oil painting of large dimensions) called “Vidreiros” (glassmakers), based on her experience in Marinha Grande. Today it is housed at the Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa (University of Lisbon). From 1944 to 1985 she taught drawing at different schools, including the Escola de Artes Decorativas António Arroio. Her only child was born in 1948, and this combined with her work as a teacher kept her painting career in the background for several years. Meanwhile, her husband Jorge de Oliveira participated in the emerging movements of Neorealism and Surrealism, and he was one of the pioneers of Geometric abstraction in Portugal. However, her creative impulse was always present, and although she did not have a formal painting career Tereza still drew different drafts and projects, many of them on train or telephone tickets, which would later become developed sketches. In this long period she was also dedicated to watercolor painting, exploring her technical potential by making projects for oil canvas which would end up being used for the majority of her works. As Tereza Arriaga said: “oil is like digging the earth”. Watercolors provided her more liberty and speed in the moment of creation. In the 1950s and 1960s she dedicated herself mainly to portraits. Between 1951 and 1952, Tereza also focused on paintings with geometric atmosphere. In 1966 and 1967 she cooperated with the Sociedade Cooperativa de Gravadores Portugueses (Portuguese Engravers Cooperative Society), known as Cooperativa Gravura, participating in the exhibitions of the courses‘ end. At the end of the 1960s Arriaga began dedicating herself to painting, adopting the style which she maintained for the rest of her life. Despite several drafts (such as a charcoal series on child