The wind that day… brought Dino Matamoro’s book

“Once my mother came from church and said to me: ‘A fly is following me'”. From there, the story was born. fly again. – Writing was a desire. This is how Din Matamoro (Vigo, 1958) summarizes the story of how he spent himself from brush to keyor from line to word, build in 24 short stories a picture that can be read even though it has the form of a book and under the title the wind that day. It is not the first time that she is a painter, an artist with a long career, with works in public and private collections, and a member Royal Galician Academy of Fine Arts, dive into a field that is not strictly yours. He signed a novel many years ago. Dolores Ruiz and Alfonso Armada, writers and friends, encouraged him not to give up. Literature is left out of the Fine Arts, but it is a beautiful art that, while it may not be good for any creator, reading his stories makes it clear that it is. And there are also illustrations the wind that day. But Dean Matamoro did not want to be redundant. The pictures that accompany some of the stories are his, but they don’t explain the text because they already explain it. words of the painter.

Matamoro says he devoured self-absorbed Lord of the Rings which awakened the desire to write. “I’ve always loved storms and shifting clouds. When I started painting, my painting was about winds, mountains and darkness,” he recalls. as I said Ignacio Pérez-Jofre, his friend, also an artist turned publisher in the Solar de Ediciones adventure, “Things were happening in my paintings, they were like landscapes of the mind,” he agrees. This desire to write came to Vigo during the crisis and polished them during the pandemic. «I turned off the light in my studio and started painting in natural light., he painted less in the winter, and as the seasons passed, he painted more, but generally he had time for other things. It gave me time to write, to read, to be with family, with friends… and I started writing stories, which turned out like drawings, trying to learn,” he admits. He started writing stories based on phrases like those of his mother, and nothing is true or false, everything happened, but everything is made up in 24 surprising stories. For example, Poseidon’s Adventure it’s a trip back in time. «I lived as a boy in a house on Doctor Cadaval Street, which faced the back of the old Tamberlick and Odeón cinemas. The fascination I felt for the movies was so great that I listened to the sounds by putting my ear to the door. I went to that past, but to create the story I connected it to when Multicines Centro closed and opened a supermarket in the same location where at night, when it gets dark, something happens”, and you can read up to that point.

In the first, Similarthe protagonist sees her father’s signature on a banana peel, the old man and her friends from the past begin to appear in the air, but the wind plays with her and carries them away.

“Stephen King said in the prologue of one of his books that for him happiness is when two words come together and a picture appears in the mind. For me, what I was doing is something similar, I think that these stories are very painterly. While reading, you visualize,” he explains. And he adds that there is sadness and fear, “but there is light inside,” says the artist, an avid reader. dark classics. There is hidden humor in their stories, there are unexpected endings, and there is something that unites them all. In addition to teamwork, which stands out as essential for a joint project, which an artist working alone is not used to: there is wind. “The wind is a character, in all stories it blows, in some it doesn’t, in some there is a breeze,” he corrects. There is also the uncertainty of the time in which we had to live: «what will happen to the earthwith the sea, with trees, with animals, birds and above all goats”, always a source of inspiration for the author.

Even the design and appearance Juan Gallego and the ocher tone of the cover is very similar to him: “Like my picture, which is to introduce you. A blank page bounces in the eye,” he concludes.

Exhibition in Argonauts 24 and covers for Cómplices

Din Matamoro has not yet wiped off the smile of a child in new shoes with a book in his hands, and he already has the following grimace on his lips — and traces of paint on his fingers, from intense hours of non-stop painting — waiting for the grand opening of the exhibition, which will open this Friday at Argonautas 34, Diego Santomé’s studio and gallery in A Ramallosa. It’s called “Two Fractions and a Dream” and it will be a celebration that will continue at Area Fofa Beach, weather permitting. This good year, the resident of Vigo signed the covers of two albums by the author Teo Cardalda and María Monson, accomplices.