10 Questions with Rodrigo de Toledo

Rodrigo de Toledo is a Brazilian-American multidisciplinary visual artist, graphic designer, and a tenured animation professor at Northern Arizona University. De Toledo’s work has been awarded by Forbes, NASA, and Coca-Cola, and by the official selection of international animation and film festivals such as SIGGRAPH and RioCine, has been featured on MTV, Canal + (France), PBS TV (USA), Globo TV (Brazil), and on publications such as How Magazine, and Leonardo Journal, as well as on numerous online platforms. His whimsical, imaginary visual worlds have been showcased in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, in museums and galleries, such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), IBM Gallery (Brazil), Miyagi Museum of Art (Japan), Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum (USA), and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, where de Toledo started his career, and his studies in music composition, videoart, animation, and painting (Museum of Modern Art, and Parque Lage School of Visual Arts), followed by degrees as Associate of Software Development (ORT Institute of Technology), Bachelor of Industrial Design / Graphic Design (Faculdade da Cidade), and a Master of Fine Arts, emphasis in Art and Technology (School of the Art Institute of Chicago).

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ARTIST STATEMENT

Inspired by ancient mythological archetypes, their psychology, and visual depictions, de Toledo has focused, during the last decade, on the design of fictional mythology and its visual iconography. Employing a primitive pop-surreal graphic style, he investigates questions of identity and spirituality, as well as the media’s effect on personal memory and fantasy. De Toledo’s cross-disciplinary exploration delivers his mythology through an integrated transmedia experience that includes graphic novels, paintings, animation, ceramics, sound, prints, installations, and performances.

As an artist, scholar, and graphic designer, he is instinctively attracted to visual systems. His research on visual language and visual style centers on the designs and techniques found in ancient religious archetypes and symbols, as well as in cartoons and comics characters. The application of symbols in his compositions follows an invented visual grammar, a combination of hieroglyphic language and mysterious alchemical schemas.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our public. Who are you, and how would you describe yourself as a person and an artist?

My name is Rodrigo de Toledo; I am a "carioca," born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And have lived in the USA for many years, where I have a beautiful family and a wonderful creative career as a visual artist, graphic designer, animator, and visual communication professor. I am still figuring out how much my original and acquired cultures balance themselves out in one single person – my intersectionality.
Tough question: "Who am I?". Especially for someone who takes the "know thyself" aphorism as a guiding life principle. My art reflects that self-knowledge pursues. I am a perpetual seeker and explorer as an artist and as a human being. I follow my curiosity and listen to my imagination. I am restless about exploring new and different media and art forms, which is disorienting and exhausting sometimes, but often lands me in unusual and beautiful places and on uniquely uncharted paths.

What is your artistic background? And when did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?

I liked drawing with color pencils and loved imagining scenes in my head from a very early age. My mother was into art exhibitions and art books. I was 15 years old when I first had the desire to be a professional artist. I started taking painting lessons with a professional painter. He taught a small group of kids in his attic studio in Rio de Janeiro. I was immediately attracted to surrealism. Dali and Magritte. From 15 years old on, I started signing and dating my artwork, like I saw professional artists do. I methodically kept and stored my artwork chronologically. I liked exploring surrealist landscape scenes, strange hybrid creature-human characters, and colorful semi-abstract graphisms. I was very influenced by international art books and the exhibitions of contemporary Brazilian artists in Rio and São Paulo, including Geração 80 and the Bienal de São Paulo.
My artistic education was not linear, and it was full of indecisions and rapid turns. At the end of high school, when I had to decide which Major to apply for, I wanted to go into special effects (VFX) – I was attracted to how fantastical VFX scenes could be. But there was not a filmmaking school in Rio at the time, let alone VFX. At college age, I studied painting, video art, and animation in stand-alone courses and workshops. I took two years of Music undergraduate at university and a one-year software development certificate. I got really interested in digital music and animation, which was a total pioneer space at that time, especially in Brazil. I then went through a complete Graphic Design BFA Major. All that combined allowed me to produce animation for clients in the advertising and corporate world, and produce independent animation shorts, digital art, and collaborate with video artists. I founded one of the first digital animation studios in Brazil in 1987. And started getting selected for international animation and video/film festivals in 1990. In 1993 I curated the first national digital painting exhibition and helped organize the first virtual reality conference and exhibition in Brazil. At that point, I moved to the USA to get an MFA in Art and Technology, where I studied 3D animation and interactive art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 
From that point on, I was always involved in creating and exhibiting art, providing creative and design services (including for NASA), and being a design and animation college professor (at Northern Arizona University).

You work with several different techniques. Which is your favorite one? And what does it represent for you?

As far as medium-technique, I have a super soft spot for painting with gouache and ink on rice paper, or watercolor on paper. Gouache color fills lined black ink was my original medium and technique, and I keep going back to it. I love how delicate and tactile the craft is, especially after working with digital art, graphic design, and animation. The visual style that results from my use of this technique reminds me of cartoons, comics, Buddhist thangkas, and medieval Middle Eastern and European styles, used in historical storytelling and religious narratives. On the other hand, I just love digital painting for the speed, trial and error possibilities, and readiness of distribution. Recently, I have started using digital painting as a sketching step for larger acrylic on canvas paintings.

Your biography mentions that your work "explores questions on identity and spirituality and the media's effect on personal memory and fantasy." What does your art aim to say to the viewers?

What I mean with that sentence is that in my creative process, I explore questions about my identity and spirituality, and the effect of media on my imagination. I believe that what I visually express mirrors, in deep and superficial ways, the audience's imagination. I don't aim to say anything specific. I hope viewers enjoy, find beauty, get curious, and be puzzled by seeing the multitude of symbols and archetypes, and ultimately discover symbolic connections between them. Essentially, I like interacting with the audience's symbolic mind, hoping it supports their "know thyself" journey.

How do you create your works? What is your creative process like? 

While painting and drawing, the creation is often based on pure and direct imagination, literally tapping into the images that my unconscious allows to leak into the conscious mind and then laying them out onto some physical or digital medium. This partially feels like a scene that defines itself with a life of its own. As an image keep getting more detail and revealing itself on the paper – as my hand and the medium interact, my action becomes more deliberate and driven by the conscious mind, as I intentionally choose elements to fill in the gaps and create a coherent whole. I have referred to this process as "fictional world design" and "psycho-archaeology".
Another common process to me resembles a conceptual and mediatic collage. This happens when I conciliate disparate ideas, visualizations from different moments, and various experimentations into a conceptually coherent body of work. Like an installation that I created (Tetrad Dimensions of the Cosmos) for the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum show, which had animation, performance-recorded video, and painted plastic toys. I bring interests of mine together. It is like mediating a dispute of many desires, getting them to collaborate, while each element is asking for dominance or exclusivity. Because I have a varied repertoire, the dispute sometimes is tough, but it usually ends well.
And sometimes, I just create a piece to functionally fit in a body of work.

In your work, you create imaginary worlds inspired by ancient mythological archetypes and cartoons. What are your main sources of inspiration? 

My main source of inspiration is my imagination. I have always been drawn to studying mystical imagery, so I am always discovering and letting myself be influenced by myths and imagery from various spiritual traditions and mythologies. That imagery manifests archetypes from the collective unconscious and imagination. In the Myth of the Incomplete Self project, the inspiration was primarily from Tibetan Buddhism, Alchemy, Gnosticism, and Hinduism. All archetypes come from the same psychological sources, be it in ancient religious narratives, or the latest cartoons, and contemporary culture. I am into artists whose work hints at some fantastical fictional universe, which often has a pop flavor. I grew up watching and reading American, Japanese, French, and Brazilian cartoons, graphic novels, and comics - which had a formative influence on my aesthetics and unconscious archetypes. From Hieronymus Bosh to Takashi Murakami. Moebius to Hayao Miyazaki. Bob Cuspe to UltraMan.

Is there any other theme or technique you would like to experiment with? 

I have worked with mythology for a while. Mythology is embedded with critical aspects of human existence, so I feel there are still infinite thematic and storytelling possibilities there. However, sometimes I would like to create visual art, and animation like some songwriters create songs, more spontaneously, from an emotional place that only interpersonal drama inspires. As far as a technique, I would like to really explore a blend of live-action video and animation. I am also very intrigued by fashion design, and wearables for performance.

What do you think of the art community and market? How do you find opportunities to show your work? Tell us more about your relationship with art collectors.

I love hanging out with artists and collaborating. The world needs the art community, if anything, to keep the collective sanity. Art is such a difficult thing to define, qualify, and quantify, and I think the art market reflects that. Value, in all respects, looks random sometimes, especially in regards to how a "valuation" record is established.
As far as opportunities, I use various methods. I apply to open calls for exhibitions, residencies, and prizes; I approach galleries, collaborate with other artists, and receive invitations. 
My work has been acquired by institutional collectors, such as the Daniel Langlois Archive, Centro Cultural Itaú, and Rhyzome.org. Individual collectors purchase my work, and it tends to happen during and after exhibitions. I don't have established relationships with recurrent collectors – but I am interested in developing them. 

You have worked and exhibited internationally and already have a long and successful career. What is one piece of advice you would give to an emerging artist?

It is usually a long game. Nurture your inner inspiration, visualize it, and understand it. Develop and nurture your tangible craft and skills. Connect with the world (showing, marketing, networking). And keep going. Like everything else, the more you put into it, the more you get. Persistence and learning from rejection and mistakes will reward you. Making a living with a parallel or complementary activity may be needed for a while or always. That's OK. That should not stop you from continuing the artistic dialogue with yourself and the world, producing art, and taking on opportunities. Keep always growing as an artist. Keep the thread going, don't break the line.

And lastly, what are you working on right now? Anything exciting you would like to tell our readers?

I am in the initial phase of creating a series of animated shorts. I am working on getting the artwork of my last two solo exhibitions to travel – Kin, and Myth of the Incomplete Self. And I am working on establishing a new platform to sell my work online.