well.
After three years working there I had a heart problem and returned to doing portraits in pencil beginning with my own portrait.
How did you begin painting visions?
Years passed and I used to say to my mother, when I am older I will paint several pictures of myself so that after I am dead people will know there has been a painter in the family! One day I was asked to accompany a foreign gentleman because I spoke a little English but I did not know that he was the biologist Denis McKenna. After some years he recommended me for a job in Sepagua but I was not able to take it up because my mother fell ill. So when he came back in 1985 I asked him if he would show my pictures in an exhibition he was organizing in Switzerland. They were small pictures, but later he returned with Luis Eduardo Luna who said how beautifully you paint Pablo. I can promote your work; do you want to be a world class painter?
I said no, I don’t want any of those things. I don’t know what a ‘world class’ painter is. I just want you to help me sell my pictures to make a little money. I was portraying the daily realities of people in the Amazon, how they sow and harvest, how they fish and celebrate their fiestas and so on. Luna said how is it I haven’t met you before now? Every year I have been coming for the last eight years, travelling up the Amazon through Brazil and Peru to Panama!
I asked him why he came. What was he looking for? We are interested in the magical plants of Peru from the coast, Sierra and Selva . I know what you are after, I said. I used to be a shaman ten years ago, what a shame you didn’t know me before, but now I have put all that behind me. I could have told you so much about