Growing into Art

Shelby McKie | Feature Story News | March 31, 2019

Roger Lopes Neves is a 21 year-old student at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA.

Growing up, Roger has always been talented at drawing and painting and has always dreamed of working for Pixar, illustrating cartoons for movies and books. His twin brother, Ralph Lopes Neves, shares that he remembers Roger always being able to draw something just from looking at it.

“Ever since I could walk I would draw on the walls at home, so my parents finally bought me an easel,” he shares. He also says that his biggest inspirations were not real people but the cartoons in Disney films, and would often take the covers off of the VCR tapes and free copy the images on them.

Roger was quiet and reserved in high school but if you mentioned anything art related, he lit up. “That was really the only way we could get him to talk,” Diana Carbone, a high school friend, recalls.

While he always thought he wanted to be an animator or illustrator, all of that changed once he got into college.

College did not come as easy to Roger as it does others. He graduated high school in 2016 and immediately went to working in retail, at Abercrombie and Fitch.

He is one of three boys in a family that could not afford to go to college following high school. For Roger, it wasn’t even an option at first.

After high school, Roger fell into a depression. Something that is common for artists, usually later in the field. He visited a therapist and ended up not drawing for a year and a half. It was no longer giving him the sense of relief and comfort it once did.

Throughout these two tough years, there was one thing that Roger was able to find relief through, and that was online shopping.

“I loved receiving packages, and that feeling when a new one came to the door,” he says happily.

In 2018, Roger decided he would attend the college of his dreams, both for his mother who felt guilty about being unable to send her boys to college, and for himself. After two long years of being in a rut and not fulfilling his desires, it was time he moved on.

When asked if he had any plans of also attending college in the future, his brother Ralph said yes. “I definitely want to go to trade school one day, after Roger graduates.”

Ralph shares that although he wouldn’t need to go to college for his future career, he would like to eventually go to trade school, but due to financial issues they kind of have to take turns. They cannot afford to all go at once.

Roger finally attended Mass Art, starting off as an art major, but found he wasn’t happy in his courses, which consisted mostly of drawing and painting.

His teachers commended his talents and were always curious about his dreams of pursuing art. But the truth was, being forced to do art a certain way for a grade all the time, rather than just for pleasure, ruined the freedom and creativity of it for Roger.

He says that he occasionally will still draw for fun, but it just wasn’t as big of an interest to him as it once was. Because he was talented, people would always be asking him to draw all different things and it became an added stress.

Not only was illustration not the same for him anymore, but since he would be paying for college all on his own, he wanted to major in something that might support him better in the future. There’s possibility for illustrators to make lots of money but there is also the chance of getting a job here and there, with no steady income.

After one semester of being an art major, and several opinions from friends and teachers, Roger finally switched his major to fashion. Roger has always loved fashion but, growing up in a household where the men were expected to be masculine, stopped him from expressing that desire.

He shares a story from when he was a child about how his grandfather wanted all of the boys in the family to take turns holding a live frog in their hands to prove their “manliness.” Roger proudly claimed, “I did not hold that frog.”

“I saw a very quick change in him becoming himself... he started wearing what he wanted and what he loved, instead of a baseball t-shirt everyday like he did in high school,” Diana laughs.

As did most of his internet following. Roger now expresses his love for art in a new way, through fashion, and shares it through his social media feeds.

Having the opportunity to go to college has truly given Roger the freedom and confidence to express his true passion, and he only hopes to continue discovering more about himself and the artistic world.