What is the best thing that I love about my work?

The thing I love most about my work is knowing that, as difficult as the reality of an artist in Brazil today is, having a job and an initiative to carry out projects that are not committed to any interest that is not 100% in line with my personal convictions without suffering reprisals regarding the quality of the work I am doing. I understand how difficult, slow and costly it is to carry out work that is consistent with my principles without bowing to merely commercial interests, because the task becomes lonely and without much support, but I managed to reach a level where people even disagreed with my initiative. has respect for my work and my performance and that brings me a lot of personal satisfaction that keeps me firm in my purpose as an artist.

What is my idea of happiness?

Build a world without exploiters and exploited, without hunger, without misery, without inequalities, without destruction. A world with respect for those who are different, where greed and selfishness become a past definitively overcome by humanity.

What is my greatest fear?

Continuing to live in a world of hate and exploitation like the one I see growing and fructifying these days.

What is the trait that I most deplore in myself?

Inability to understand a series of issues outside my reality and the difficulty of convincing the most hardened hearts to be sensitized to the suffering of others.

Which living persons in my profession do i most admire?

In fact, since I was a child I have always admired more people who work in other areas than in my area of expertise. In a way, I’m not usually influenced by people in the areas I work in. As an illustrator I can say that I greatly admire the work of Brazilian illustrator Pedro Mauro Moreno, my personal friend who currently works with comics for Editora Bonnelli in Italy. I really admire the work of cartoonist Alexandre Beck with his work in the Armandinho strips, which is a work at a very similar level to the work that cartoonist Quinho did in Argentina in the 70s. I also greatly admire the work of my personal friend, the Brazilian cartoonist Bira Dantas, both for his political performance and for his ability to add dozens of other Brazilian visual artists from abroad in his projects. As an educator (I am in the last year of the pedagogy course) I have a huge admiration for the work of the Brazilian pedagogue Demerval Saviani and his pedagogical model (Historical-Critical Pedagogy) which is a reference and inspiration in the model of artistic work that I intend to carry out. in the field of education.

What is my greatest extravagance?

Probably being reclusive, not interested in fame and not liking to speak languages other than Portuguese. I understand that no other language will allow me to develop my logical thinking with the same capacity that Portuguese allows me.

On what occasion would I lie?

If speaking the truth puts at risk everything I’ve been fighting to build.

What is the thing that I dislike the most in my work?

Work for money. Living in a country where an artist is considered an enemy.

When and where was I the happiest, in my work?

I can’t say for sure, in fact I project my desires into the future. I’m currently on a personal project for years and it seems that it will take at least another year to complete. I understand that the moment I manage to finish this current project it will probably be the happiest moment of my life, at least until I start the next project. From my life experience it was always very difficult to feel happy, fulfilled. I spent years looking for the opportunity to be able to work with illustration fully and when I did, there was so much work to do that I just didn’t have time for my personal life, which almost led me to destruction as a person, almost making me move away permanently. of all the people who were dear to me. This reality of not being able to reconcile my accomplishment as an artist with my accomplishment as a human being brought me many questions and from this reality I tried to reassess my performance as an artist and my goals in art.

If I could, what would I change about myself?

If it were possible, I would like to have been born in a rich country and have skin with less melanin, because being an artist in a country that cannot develop does not fit in terms of appearance to the biotype of a successful man in society itself. hugely prevents you from being successful. The world is still very xenophobic and racist, even though I’m not the type of person who is usually the least privileged, I still realize how much easier it would be if I had a condition more within the acceptable standard by society.

What is my greatest achievement in work?

Being able to create any kind of art project from scratch to final form. In the reality where I came from, having managed to learn and master the various areas of artistic production to the point of being able to master the process is an achievement that for most people is unthinkable.

Where would I most like to live?

Honestly I would like to live in the middle of the woods, planting, raising animals and making art, creating a society from scratch without any dependence on consumerism, the cultural industry, large corporations. I would like to be able not to depend on any industrialized product, in communion with nature and without having to witness landowners who destroy forests just to increase their profit and being treated like great men of success.

What is my most treasured possession?

Time. There is nothing capable of making up for lost time or time badly spent.

What is my most marked characteristic?

I’m unpredictable.

What is my most inspirational location, in my city?

I don’t have one, I really liked living in São Paulo, it was a city I dreamed of living in and in the years I lived there I felt I was in the place where I should be. I love the beach, any beach, but I can’t feel part of that kind of landscape. I just don’t know why. I like the countryside, I like the forest, the rivers, nature. But I still haven’t met a place that could be my most inspiring location. In fact I long to find a place secluded enough so that I can look at yours at night and see the stars and the milky way. I only had the opportunity to experience this once in my life and it was the best experience of my entire life, I felt full in the Universe, I felt part of the world, I felt God, I felt love for all things. If I can look up to the sky and see the stars again without any source of light to overshadow the starry sky, then I have found my place.

What is my favorite place to eat and drink, in my city?

At home, I actually don’t give much importance to trendy places. If I’m with friends, my dogs and cats, watching a good movie, reading a good book, listening to good music (or even playing music) and having a pleasant and productive conversation, this is my place. Before the pandemic in Bauru, there was a place, a tobacconist where people gathered to talk, play an instrument, sing, recite poems, get to know each other, talk about politics and recognize each other as equals. A tobacconist owned by some friends of mine, but when the pandemic came, this place closed and today there is no such place anymore. It was never good for the food or the drink, but for the people and the conversations. I understand that there is no such thing as good food or drink when you are in a place where people are not pleasant and conversation develops in harmony with people sharing the same worldview.

What books influenced my life and how?

I had the opportunity to read several books, most of them spiritists, as this is the religion I professed and practiced for over 20 years. Today, even far from spiritism, I keep a lot of influence, mainly from the literature that I consumed of spiritist origin. Books like “A 2000 anos” by Chico Xavier, “Confidências de um Inconfidente” by Mariluza Moreira Vasconcelos and especially books like “Herculanum”, “Romance de um Rainha”, “The Iron Chancellor” “A Vengeance do Jew” and “ The Night of Saint Bartholomew” by the Russian medium Wera Krijanovskaya were the books that most influenced me. Of the books that are not part of this type of literature, I prefer the books “Education and Democracy” by Demerval Saviani, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by Paulo Freire, “A Ideologia Alemã” by Marx and Engels, “Manual do Roteiro” by Syd Field , “The Rules of Art” by Pierre Bourdier, “Comics and Sequential Art” by Will Eisner, “Brazilian Children’s Literature” by Mariza Lajolo and Regina Zilberman and in the comics “Watchmen” by Allan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the series “ Asterix” by Uderzo and Goscini, “The Dark Knight” by Frank Miller, “Akira” by Katsuhiro Otomo and Disney stories by Carl Barks. Spiritist literature was very important to me to understand the relationship between the world and our personal expectations and also made me begin to understand the relationship between spirituality and politics, study books such as pedagogy helped me to structure my vision of a teaching model that I want to help build, books by Marx and Engels taught me to understand power relations without masks, technical books on art helped me consolidate my training as an artist and how to tell a story with quality and comics built the first visions world and stories, their narratives, humor and approach to the world.

You Only Die Once. What music would I listen on my last day?

“A Day in the Life” Beatles. I would listen every day of my life.

Who is my hero or heroine in fiction?

Maybe I haven’t, I’ve never been able to see fictional characters with the same degree of involvement I’ve had with real people.

Who are my heroes and heroines in real life?

Many, since my early childhood, there was a great idol in Brazil who was treated as if he were an incarnate demigod, the positive opinion about him was so great that it was impossible not to nurture an admiration for him, even if in a completely artificial way, because I had not seen their deeds. This man is Pelé, with time I was able to watch his achievements and there is no way to disagree, in fact, other great football players of the time were equally incredible to the point that, at least in my understanding, it makes great football players today look like amateurs. I also had many heroes besides him that I first met about and later came to admire. The first must be John Lennon, I met him the day he died, I got to know his work, his history and his activism. Then I naturally developed a great liking for comedians to the point that many of them became true heroes for me. Charlie Chaplin, Jerry Lewis, Brazilian comedians like Ronald Golias, Chico Anysio, Jô Soares, Costinha. I also saw in many Brazilian musicians true heroes, especially those who faced the dictatorship during the 60s and 70s of the last century creating works that insisted on denouncing the crimes of dictators such as Chico Buarque de Holanda, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, Gonzaguinha. During my adolescence, another great hero emerged for the vast majority of Brazilians and I had the opportunity to witness his story, which was the Formula 1 driver Ayrton Sena, he was really a phenomenon with unbelievable feats. Then, over time, I got to know a little more about big names linked to politics like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Lula.

Which movie would i recommend to see once in a lifetime?

City of God, by Fernando Meirelles.

What role play stories in my life and work?

Countless have happened over these more than 30 years of career and that are actually still happening. I still study, research, try to follow countless social and political movements, etc. and all this has made my trajectory much richer. In the past, I acted more professionally, and it was very difficult for a boy like me, born in a city dominated by the automobile industry and who grew up in another industrial city, to get an artistic education. Most of the people in my family are still civil servants and this world focused on the arts, communication, advertising, was a foreign medium for everyone. I always clashed with everyone around me, brothers, cousins, neighbors, schoolmates, etc. because I didn’t have the same interests that they had, while most liked to play soccer in the street, play with dolls and plastic animals, I was interested in cartoons, music, reading children’s books, comic books. I got to produce several magazines when I was 8, 9 years old, I loved movies, when I was a teenager the first profession I wanted to have was a writer, because I used to create stories when I played and wrote them down in notebooks. Over time I started doing theater at school (always in the humor genre), I even wanted to be an actor for a while, when I turned 14 my uncle, who was an employee of Banco do Brasil, encouraged all the young people in the family to compete the job as an office boy at the bank, to start helping with household expenses. So I ended up working at the Bank, which I particularly hated, but there was the salary that at the time seemed good enough and with that I left my artistic side abandoned for a while. When there were changes in the civil service at the end of the 1990s as a result of the first neoliberal reforms that took place at the time, I learned that it would not be possible to pursue a career within the bank (everyone who entered as an office boy at the time ended up working at the bank until retirement) and I went through an identity crisis, at the age of 17, so I discovered that drawing could be a profession and I tried to study, get to know, learn about the profession, took a course, left home and moved to São Paul behind what for many was an impossible dream. In São Paulo I went through countless difficulties, I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have money, I didn’t even have anything to eat, but I continued to bet that if I had any chance, any talent, I would make it, otherwise I would end up dying. I managed, with great difficulty, and I felt for years that being a person from another social reality in Brazil becomes an even greater obstacle to establishing myself as a visual artist.

What do the words ‘You are the storyteller of your own life’ to me?

It means that you should never, under any circumstances, in any way, accept the fate that others want to impose on you. You are master of your destiny, a person who passively accepts the plans that someone has planned is ceasing to be human, has already died as a man, just vegetates as if he were an animal, without identity, without personality, without life. There is a very high price to pay for forging your own path, for being the writer of your own story, but the reward is incalculable. Even in difficult times, when you realize you’ve made a mistake and have to correct your story, retrace your paths, reevaluate your priorities, even so, you’re still staying alive, aware, attentive and in charge of the situation. No one should ever surrender to the whims, whether of society, the system or our limiting beliefs. We are human, diverse, complex, full of peculiarities. We are not beings made on a production line. Never accept being just another brick in the wall.

Who is my greatest fan, sponsor, partner in crime?

I don’t know, probably my wife, Val, she who puts up with my adventures and is always there for me in difficult times. There are other people, friends, some very faithful over the years like Antonio Oliveira (Boca) or my advisor at the university, Vitor Machado, who accepts all the most local proposals of academic projects involving arts, education and social commitment. A great friend I met about 5 years ago is Igor Fernandes, a great political activist from Bauru, friend and partner in numerous projects. Currently there are many people who give me artistic, theoretical, political, academic, social and financial support so that I can continue with my trajectory and I am extremely grateful to all these people. My work today is not just mine, it is not just the result of my effort, but of the chain of help and solidarity that all these people are creating. We have an extremely delicate moment in our country and we need a lot of unity, help, solidarity, understanding and strengthening because the fate and lives of many people are at stake. I hope that the fact that people outside Brazil are aware, even if only minimal, that we are going through an atypical and inhumane situation that is putting the fate of millions of people at risk and perhaps even humanity as a whole, can help to definitely win this moment in our lives.

Which people or companies would I like to work with?

I don’t know, honestly, I don’t usually think about companies, sometimes people. When I was a kid I had an affinity for Disney, but I don’t know if someone with my profile would be interesting to them. I really like the work that Fortiche did on Arcane, but even saying that I’d like to work on it… maybe that’s too pretentious. But if any company wants to know my work, my projects (even those that are still being developed), the areas where I work and identify with me, they will be very welcome. I don’t usually make most of our actions public for the sake of protection, because our work needs to take shape, intensify, generate a chain of people who want to build a reality where art, knowledge, solidarity and respect for beings and things guide all relationships at all levels, without fanaticism, without hatred, only with hope and that they are first close to me, but anyone interested in knowing and who wants to join us will be very welcome.

What project am I looking forward to work on?

I’m already on a project, the project of my life, it’s called Quanticons and it’s about a group of quantum elements that hold scientific knowledge and pass this knowledge on to children. A project that I started to sketch in 1999 and that I had never had the time, knowledge and conditions to work on. It is a children’s project aimed at the education of children and adolescents that is interested in transmitting scientific knowledge directly to children, using the same communication resources that any work aimed only at entertainment has: adventure, fantasy, good humor and stories. that treat the child as an intelligent being, capable of questioning, who just needs to have the opportunity to know about things. It is an ambitious project, which aims to become the best friend of teachers in the classroom, which deals with important themes for people’s reality, which brings knowledge of the most varied scientific areas, such as natural sciences, humanities, exact sciences, etc. ., a project that no big company wanted to sponsor, support, because it requires a lot of work. It is a proposal that has absolutely no way to follow a pre-defined formula because until today no one has proposed to carry out something similar, however, there is no lack of research in the most varied areas capable of supporting this project. I was lucky to find in the academic environment all the help and to have access to all the knowledge necessary to turn this project into reality. After this project is ready, something can happen, I hope it’s something good, I hope to be able to continue, receive new partners, support that until today has not appeared, anyway. Only the future will reveal.

Where can you see me or my work?

Well… I currently have my profiles on my social networks Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, VK, Behance and Artstation. I update more often on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. I also have a page in Portuguese for the collective refinancing campaign of my children’s project (Quanticons), a store that sells t-shirts, mugs, posters, pillows, etc. with prints of my arts and a personal channel on Youtube that I’m temporarily without producing new materials to focus on the end of my graduation in pedagogy and the production of Quanticons, which by the end of 2023 will already have the first comic book magazine being edited and distributed free of charge to public schools in Brazil (I still don’t know the scope of the circulation and distribution).

What do the words “Passion Never Retires” mean to me?

For me it means much more than a relationship between work, production to receive a salary, but passion is an invisible fire that consumes us from the inside but at the same time makes us feel life in our guts. It is the risk of being alive, of taking on the challenges, wanting to change the world and knowing where my action will make the world go, have autonomy and awaken that same fire in other beings around you, so that this fire will never be extinguished. . Because human beings need to humanize themselves, they need to have a passion for life, for things, for knowledge, for the construction of a just, dignified, peaceful world, where everyone is treated with love and respect, kindness, never lack a roof to live in, a , quality food, education, health, faith, hope and prosperity. The day this fire retires, humanity will cease to exist, becoming mere mindless and purposeless animals.

Which creative professionals should Peter invite to tell their story?

You could invite Pedro Mauro Moreno, Bira Dantas, Jota Camelo, Luiz Carlos Fernandes, Renato Aroeira, Laerte Coutinho, Cival Einstein, Montalvo Machado, Kako, Marcelo D’Salete.

How can you contact me?

The safest ways to contact me are through my profiles on social networks such as Instagram /flaviormota, Facebook /flaviormota, LinkedIn /flaviormota, Twitter /flaviormota (all profiles are flaviormota), personal email flaviormota@gmail.com , you can also get in touch via my WhatsApp (I don’t use a conventional phone, it’s no use insisting) +55 11 96753 6232.