Fires

I first came across Lorenzo Mattotti on Pinterest a few days ago and what I saw compelled me to explore more. Fortunately, I found Fires soon after. I had no idea what a surprisingly wrenching experience this would prove to be. Fires is as obsessed with nature as the Romantic poets were. Clouds like clumps of light move through the sky while rose petals rain down on the island during the day but tongues of fire and their shadows dance in it through the night. Awe and terror are never far from each other when it comes to how Mattotti's characters feel about nature. Eddies of emotions swirl around in its pages, fleeting, surreal, inexpressible but all too human. It speaks with colours, with shapes, with feelings, telling a story that words couldn't have half as well. The story itself is simple enough (but none the less haunting for it) with a few token twists in it but it is the art that has been manipulated to tell it that feels so evocative and deeply personal and is what ultimately makes Fires memorable.