JB : That reminds me, in principle, of Moebius’ Arzach. I also wanted to create other worlds, but always with the feeling that it’s the line itself that is developing, crossing, creating impressions. Especially in the very white passages, and also in the final, very dark passages. It was a different way of working –like automatic writing, you know. In The Thinker’s Tree, I felt very free with the drawing style, but I wasn’t able to continue it afterward. But after that, I had to do some other pieces, in particular the one in The Return of God, “Stigmata”, which in fact is a very tightly constructed story, where I worked with a writer. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted at first to do a very long and visionary story. I wanted to create something very free, very spontaneous. When they asked me for this story, I had already done about fifteen pages, images like that… and here I had an opportunity to do it. The idea was also to be able to put in a lot of my world, as I do in my personal sketchbooks. The idea was to develop the drawing - develop it in a very free manner, without words, and also to develop this dream world. They asked me for some black and white pages, and I had already started doing a very free-form story, with just that phrase as a starting point.

LM : Yes, it came out in the magazine Talking Heads, an Italian magazine. JB : Your last book, The Thinker’s Tree, was already serialized, right ? Lorenzo Mattotti : Yes, since Caboto …īut my last story was in The Return of God, published by Autrement, with some other authors. Jessie Bi : You haven’t released a book for a long time. (Before reading the following lines, dear reader, reader my love, be aware that Lorenzo Mattotti speaks French very well but with the musicality of an Italian accent - a small detail for your interior voice as you read these words.)

Lorenzo mattotti fires