Roger Mello: A Sea of Stories

Who was it taught you to swim?Who was it taught you to swim?I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you sailorman,it was the little fish in the sea.

Peixinhos do Mar [Sea Fish], traditional Brazilian children’s song

A deep plunge, the first seed of life that swims for its existence: without fixing the space, nor constraining the time, the trajectory of this artist flows through multiple possibilities, always ready to rethink and reinvent each territory he chooses to explore. Time is the material of his inquietude, in a continuous searching movement, always forging ahead, seeking out new objectives and concerns. From the rivers that meander through the Pantanal¹ wetlands, from the calm waters of the mangrove swamp to the raging waters of the sea, Roger Mello builds his visual narratives.

Mello was born in Brasília, the new capital of Brazil designed by Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa² in the middle of the enormous natural diversity of the Cerrado.³ This environment, together with his schooling at an establishment that embraced the innovative pedagogical theories advance by Anísio Teixeira and Darcy Ribeiro⁴, enabled the free development of his artistic expression without prejudices or preconceived ideas. Since a very early age, Mello has had a roving, curious eye, paying attention to life in its many forms, whether human, animal or plant:

I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and it has taken me on innumerous voyages. I always was a compulsive drawer fascinated by comic strips and books. I’ve always loved animals and nature in general—the woodlands, the Cerrado, the mangrove swamps. At the time, even living in Brasília, it was still possible to visit the Cerrado. On those field trips, and even in the classroom, I always had a notebook handy to draw what I was seeing or develop comic strips.

(Kikuchi)

Accompanied by his father on these constant incursions into the Cerrado, Mello observed the plants and animals who filled his “imaginary museum”⁵ with images of the local ecosystems. His encounter with the sea, during holidays spent in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Sergipe, expanded his scope of adventures with nature, in its copiously registered lines and forms. In between these trips, the books scattered about the house awoke his curiosity, and the silence of the afternoon nap gave way to the sound of turning pages.

In the 1980s, after a short term at the Agronomy College of Brasília, Roger moved to Rio de Janeiro to enroll in the graphic design course at the ESDI/UERJ.⁶ The course was concluded in 1989 with a daring graduation project, being the fruit of his observations of the fauna and flora found in the Cerrado, while marking the birth of his ability to communicate through the colors and shapes of nature.

Narrative was always of the greatest interest to Roger Mello: narrative that is manifest in widespread fields, including drama, literature, illustration, animation, cinema, and graphic design. The blurring of the genres is quite evident if we examine the visual language that Roger uses in his illustrated books. The artist passes with ease through different references and styles. His first works showed his dominium over representational drawing, from which he has slowly drifted and has moved towards the sophistication of more stylized forms. His intimacy with drawing prevails in any compositional choice, mixing styles and techniques to the benefit of narrative expressiveness.

Mello’s experimentation on each new project speaks highly of his artistic spirit. The world is the limit for his enormous library of references, while the different cultures of the world are his constant references. His creative power has renewed dialogue concerning the creative process in general, while still demonstrating awareness of all the different artistic offshoots that the contemporary world has to offer. For Roger Mello, the creative act is a constant pulse and can become manifest in various languages. Although the illustrated books are his most numerous and best known works, he expresses his multiple interests in varied media, which enables different interactions...