Ace in the Hole

One of my favorite quotes from Picasso is that it took him “a lifetime to paint like a child”…. And I think that there are a lot of things that are childlike in my artwork, that I just adore, and I think that's what draws people in.

I come from a family of artists; my grandfather was an artist; my mother is an artist; my uncle is also an artist. I was born with asthma. my mother got me some great crayons and colored pencils and everything she could as long as she kept me on the couch not exerting my lungs. The career chose me. I knew that I could draw these characters and it came natural to me.

In 2004, during my wife's pregnancy, we had an ultrasound done. Everybody knows the word “cardio”,

so as soon as the doctor said cardiologist, we knew automatically that there was something wrong with our baby's heart. This was the start of a new journey.

Looking at our tiny baby, with all the tubes and stitches and things like that… that stuff just doesn't leave your mind. Why does a child, this young, have to start out life this rough? That just changed me, as an individual, made me appreciate life and just start looking at things in a different perspective, and try to be more optimistic, and have a lot of hope.

My stint at the hospital with her, my wife, and the people that I met there, including the nurses, doctors, and everybody, they were just huge sources - those people, I would draw them - I started to just doodle and create little characters and incorporate a heart into each one of them.

All of Napoleoni’s characters, he tries to use them as a way to sort of capture what he’s saying to portray; there’s something about courage, love, or not forgetting what someone has done to you, and how they affected you.

The main character Marcenvino, named after Fabio’s grandfather, is basically put together from all the other little characters that he had started. The button, the shape of his face, the body, the arms, the fact that he has no thumbs, he’s got “mitten” hands. Napoleoni wants him to look more like a ragdoll, something that was loved and loved so much, the hair fell off, clothes are missing, you know at one point somebody has to put his stuffing back together – the way you feel as a person – you know sometimes you’re fatter, you’re ragged, you’re rundown – But you know you keep going on.

Fabio used Marcevino to represent himself and how he felt through the process of dealing with his daughter. He was an avenue that Napoleoni chose to express his frustration with everything happening and basically just get out how he was feeling. The heart is always, always, always in every single piece of work that he creates. Fabio will never forget what it means to him, and where his career has gone, because of his daughter, but he wants people to understand and not forget that she played a huge part in where he is today. Fabio says – you should buy art because you have an emotional attachment, there’s something you can relate to. Don’t buy a piece of art because you want it to match your living room. There needs to be something there that draws you in, you want to walk by every single day, and you want to look at it and it reminds you of something, it pulls on your heartstrings; there needs to be an emotional value to it that never diminishes.

You don’t want to change the living room, and then change your artwork. The artwork should always stay there because it means something to you.”