My passion for this profession is ingrained in me. I realized this when my parents gave me my first drawing board when I was ten years old. Since then, I've valued the artist within me.nDue to the inspiring quote written by the great poet Fernando Pessoa, I knew exactly what I was here to do as an artist. 

 

"Art is to make others feel what we feel, to help them release themselves by offering them our unique personality to release." 

 

My project "Copacabana Illustrated" embodies what he refers to as "offering them our personality for special liberation." When I was able to see the other through the lens of this project, I could sharpen all my senses and truly comprehend myself as a human being. Drawing elderly people in this neighborhood where I lived for 12 years is a way of understanding life and its transience.

 

This project nourishes me with something larger than the pictorial and palpable. Being able to observe people's lives as a true "Flâneur," as I imagine myself to be, and transform it into art materializes a "special release" for me. This way, I can plan a timeless legacy for my audience and my country by creating iconographic images.

Special thanks to my wife Fernanda Japiassú, who showed me a new side of Copacabana, and to photographer Stefano Martini, who believed in the project and photographed the paintings for the very first time.

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