Mário Reis is a peculiar artist, not only because of the place he has chosen to live, but above all because of the pieces he produces. He lives surrounded by greenery and shady trees and has the company of various animals, which eventually serve to inspire him. Mário Reis was born on February 18, 1971, in Luanda. Descended from an old and respected family of potters, he came into contact with the art of clay at an early age. Today, he works to create novelty pieces with modern lines that have at their core all the knowledge that this art has accumulated over hundreds of years. He is a user of the potter’s wheel. In 1990/91, he attended the “Ceramic Modeling” course at CENCAL with Master Herculano Elias. He set up his studio in S. Domingos, a village in the municipality of Caldas da Rainha, and since then he has mainly used stoneware and refractory paste, iron and stainless steel, to which he applies glazes and engobes. The pieces involving animals, seagulls for example, are so colorful and dynamic that you wait for them to take flight at any moment, swooping over your head… Many of Mário Reis’ pieces are tiles, on the surface of which cats, dogs, fish, horses and birds of the most varied species are born. He also takes public figures and manages to metamorphose them into half human, half animal, as in the case of a Fernando Pessoa / Cat. Sometimes he integrates various elements such as wood, metal and glass into his pieces. Using the same repeated model, he creates panels, with fish for example, which, decorated differently, with various colors, interspersed with each other, form a whole, which, seen from afar, produces the illusion of the undulating waves of the sea. Mário Reis has several public works, such as the panels in Nazaré where the seagulls, curious, elegant and colorful, give the work a surprising liveliness. Here and there, the Nazarenes tell their seven skirts. You can also admire his panels in the churches of S. Martinho, Alfeizerão and Tornada. Mário Reis is the author of unique pieces of contemporary ceramics. He sells his pieces at his studio, at the Galeria Arte de Terra (Lisbon), at the Forte da Nazaré, at the Galeria Caravela in Funchal, and to private clients all over the world.