I have put my work in my suitcase and have flown to Bristol.

Like the Sicilian storytellers, who draw, unroll and recount, then roll everything back and leave for another destination, here I will unroll, recount, re roll and go away.

It is my tribute to Raphael. The 'deeds' that I am telling you are those of the superheroes dreamed of by him at the age of 5 and diligently annotated by his father, Bernard.

In order to capture the immediacy (outrightness?) of the child's drawing, convinced as I am that the "medium is the message", I have asked (serched?) for help from the children and young boys and girls (youngsters?) who are closest to me. The collaboration has been enlightening, as it is always when you dive into other worlds: the point of view of childhood and adolescence is like navigation on sight, the goal is there and easy to reach because you see it.

A collective work was born, perfectly in line with the principles of adult Raphael.

My collaborators have been little Margherita (“some lions”), my nephew Alessandro (the super heroes), a “special” pupil Davide (“the lions and the big lionesses” and “the unfortunate children encountered in the pitch by Rapha / Batman”). My sister Irina, with extraordinary sartorial skills, sewed the parrot.

I simply unrolled the story and organized the narrative composition. I added three-dimensionality with the tracing paper and I defined the various scenes, like in the comics, by using the coloured tissue paper, commonly employed in kindergartens.

The spatial depths given by tracing paper, does also reveal, as Masaccio teaches, the temporal sequence of the scene.

This is a work in progress: if you wish to leave  (here or in the Rapha web site) a trace of your  dreams, we will be glad to tell your story  next time and share it with friends.

Manuela Martines

Bristol, 11 April 2018