BACK A Son of The Sea
Rubén Beltrán Guerra.

God’s Hand
by Reinaldo Cedeño Pineda.

* Summary:

“To worship nature. A naughty muse who paints and sings. May  beauty ever walk away. “We are all children from one father. Manzanillo, a city living in his eyes. I learn from the lanscape”.

  The painter turned around...the eyes, like diamonds stuck on the canvas! He was so engrossed, the man apologized the best way he could and sped up.
 The same would take place again, but this time around , a phrase would act as the threshold for a conversation:
 
---Surely this is a beautiful street !---he said.
 The artist smiled.
---Do tell me, my friend, how long have you lived around here?
---Well, see , since I was born.
---By Gosh, and this is the time when you realize this street is beautiful ?
 
   A puzzled face, hardly noticeable. The speaker is not caught off guard, and shot off his reasons:

--Well you know I walk by every day... but I have come to see all this beauty just now when you painted it.
 And just a few yards off, he took a peek at this street in Manzanillo that slowly descends to the sea.
 Rubén Manuel Beltrán put down the brush and went off to tour the city. The same city which welcomed him to the world on  August, 20th, 1966.
 
City of My Dreams.

“ I paint the city, I feel motivated by the variety in architecture; I paint it because people do not understand the beauty that is being lost. I am concerned about that and I am trying to put it down on my paintings”.
“I remember I was painting some tile rooftop near my home, and look...people waited for me to finish to fix it. Some other time I was painting a house, and they were going to stucco the wall, and I told them: Stop! I am painting it now !...
 “I feel a great love for Cuban architecture, and I am shocked when I see the new houses built with concrete rooftops, the rooftop just above the head. I love cities like Santiago and Trinidad, which are preserved, people are trying”.
 “There is, of course, a reason for building hotels in the resemblance of colonial architecture”.
“Perhaps all has to do with a recurring dream, a beautiful city the details of which I can not pin down. Maybe by searching in cities like Trinidad, Manzanillo and Santiago  I can find my dream city. I used to dream also that I would lift my feet and fly over the city. And now when I dream, I wake up with lots of energy, wide awake because my dreams were pleasant”.
 When you listen to him, you know he has planted his banner in this city, or maybe found a safe haven in it. In the mean time, his childhood chimeras refuse to leave the shelter in his mind. The fine cardboard images of Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood which kept him company in his  room, he treasured until he was as tall as Rubén, his father, something remarkably impossible at the time. His Dad, a skillful hand at drawing in a family of artists.
 “My uncle René Beltrán, was also good at drawing, and on my mother’s side they are all country folk, and I also have a few cousins who are natural painters and musicians”.
 “My sister Georgina would embellish her notebooks with certain elegance, a certain beauty, and they were even people who gave her their 15th birth party photo albums for decoration”.
 “ I remember when I was in second grade, a teacher was handing out crayons, and I had a friend named Luis who came out  a winner every time..but one day my work came out first place, and during the break time he picked up fight with me.    When I left school, he was waiting outside with two of his friends and you know what followed”...
 “ I arrived home with teary eyes, but the point was my painting was chosen be the best one this time around”.
 Rubén was not a man with many tears though. On one occasion he dreamed he beat a lion,  and the child’s fears we all have were entangled in the imaginary mane and never returned.
 One thing: he was always a bit engrossed, like the people whose hands become paralyzed and can’t swallow when they can’t find the right word. Then he would take it on anybody.
 “One day, I had problems and walked down to the sea to calm down and it came to me that it soothed me and no one would ask me anything. And it stuck into me and that calmed me down. Then I would go to Masó Park, the sea front, and would sit on a near by dock, and one day I came across transparent fishes, and also the pelicans as they plunged into the water, and could see the fish in their peaks, in their pouches.  And the dolphins, and the flying fish as they opened their wings. These memories I keep here”.
 “ Manzanillo is a fishing city, overlooking a beautiful sea. The city lights have influenced me a great deal, with the contrasting colors ranging from greens to  yellows”.
 “Thank God Manzanillo  light is brilliant, intense. A light which remains a light even in the dark”.
 
No One Holds the Laws of Esthetics or For Nature Everything is Possible.

“I studied at the Elementary School of Fine Arts in Manzanillo. I used to draw a lot, and worked with water colors in my last year there. I started oil painting just 5 or 6 years ago.  My first   painting was The Placita , and I painted it from my rooftop, under the sun, and I hardly knew about agglutination”.
  “It caused me so much work to achieve anything , but I can tell you I have lost my fear to colors at this point”.
  “At school, I was told to watch at the collection of paintings from the great masters, but it bothered me a great deal that every time I saw shadows, they were all black spots and that there was no difference in the shape of leaves”.
“This made me look on landscapes more closely. And, the custard apple tree leave, for instance, is not the same as the avocado’s, or the tamarind’s,  nor is the coconut’s the same as the palm tree’s. And even the greens are different: green in a blue background, green in a red background, green and ocher.  I admire Cuban painter Tomas Sánchez very deeply”.
 The sands in Tarará beach, in the western territory of the island were illuminated for him right there, as he was given the opportunity to study at the José Joaquin Tejada Arts School in Santiago de Cuba; a breaking of nerves known as “passing from one level to another”.
 His youth then, his experiences and maybe his imagination before a prospect for a place so famous for its rebelliousness, made  him  perceive continuos fights that he rather avoided. And he decided to follow some pieces of advice: “Why don’t you take a university course...”
  He had his own choices: to be a pilot,  a forestry expert.. but as rivers always empty on the sea, teaching and arts were merged together...and he decided to major in Arts Education, then became a professor, better trained, still not yet.....a painter.
 “I started off by painting rural landscapes, mainly very thick woods, and there was always a ray of light, a way out to clarity, maybe a symbol”.
 “I was creating the landscape myself on the canvass; sometimes I started off with one idea, and then ended up with another one. I could have a mountain as a background, and I found out I painted mountains really well, and then felt miserable to erase them, and then I changed the landscape”.
 
--We understand the challenge it represents to change a piece of landscape into an artistic creation, either urban or rural, but isn’t itself a limit to creation, shouldn’t  it follow certain rules as to hues and colors?

“ I try to grasp the landscape as much as I can. For I always think of myself as an apprentice from the landscape, even though I could highlight a color, stand out a detail ”.
 “Maybe when I am not in my city, maybe in any other part of the world, I could paint a Manzanillo landscape because I have the elements in my memory”.
 “When I compare nature with what I have painted, I realize that I am really far, because God only could achieve such harmony with colors”.
 “When you look at a sunset in my town, and see a deep red, a shocking yellow, violet next to yellow; for nature nothing is impossible”.
 “Some say, colors should not be so vibrant, that you need to subdue them, I do not have the same opinion. You can place a gold yellow and a silvery color on a landscape; the important thing is the relation these colors may have with the rest in the painting”.
 “I try to grasp the nature God created, and for me, it is an immeasurable pride”.
 “The world of arts have taken many ways, so many off-the- beaten track roads, and alleys, even cul-de--sacs, that no all mighty god holds the laws of Esthetics, no one does”.
 “Beauty in Japan can be found in Sumo wrestlers, fat huge guys; in Italy, the slender woman and in Cuba, women with big rear ends. Anybody can tell you: ‘ I don’t like this work’, but what is wrong with it? , that is a different thing. Nature is whimsical, and yet everything it does, is all right”.

--How do you about selecting your landscapes. How do you take the pulse of it?

“ If I like a location, I go in the morning, at noon, in the evening; I just need to see when I like it the most”.
 “ When I paint I like to be in contact with nature, first I draw and see the new things, even though I have been over them a thousand times. And iota by iota, you come to discover what you are going to paint. I like to be across the landscape I am going to paint , to talk to people; though there are times when you are naturally speechless  when concentrated”. 
 “I have met people who have even invited me over to their balcony to paint. A great master, Da Vinci said: “ Beware of the masters, nature is wiser”.

The market is sometimes very lenient with landscapes and landscape artists; at least a certain part of the market...

“I can tell you about my case. I paint out of pleasure, and that is why it is so difficult for me to sell any painting. It is painful for me to get rid of them, since they are part of my own life, they are unique pieces; works I have created; things I would have never thought I would achieve, things I do not cease to be amazed at. Not everybody is fortunate  enough to make a living out of something he enjoys”.
 “ I have to learn, because you beget children, you raise them and give them an education, but they have to have their own life and I have to pluck up courage, to see them make their own life away from me”.

---Do you think there can be common line between the painters from the eastern part of the country, an element that makes them unique ?

“ I have met people who have lived in Havana or in big cities; in the U.S., in other places...and they always have this longing to get to their home town, Manzanillo, which is an insignificant town, but people have this attachment to their home town, wherever they may be”.
“Painters from the eastern part of the country are very much influenced by  the surrounding nature and by their own social and cultural characteristics”.
 “We grew up, at least in my case, within this sort of companionship, that solidarity, the love for the land... It would be better not to talk about differences, let us not bring differences between regions or countries..we are all children of the same father”.
 
Let us go back to native soils, Do you feel excluded from the galleries in Havana ?

 “I never painted for a gallery or a contest. Some people I know due to their endeavor to work for a gallery, for a contest, when they lose, they feel very disappointed, even the quality of their work is diminished”.
 “I am most interested in the award the public grants me. And many people like my paintings. Maybe I do have a public just because I never looked for it”.
“I have come to the conclusion that whether the world likes or not what I paint, I would keep painting; for me it is like breathing, and therefore nothing would stop me from doing it”.

A None  Too Fragile Glass:

 Manzanillo’s talk with the Guacanayabo Gulf is eternal. The Gulf opens up in the island like a cocodrile’s jaws.
 Rightfully so, Cuba’s geographical configuration, its peculiar elongated  and narrow shape is quite often compared to the animal’s.
 Officially founded on July, 11, 1792, Manzanillo was named after the Manzanillo tree (Hippomane Mancinella, Lin ), which used to populate the coast line.)
 Today, there is only one tree left, the rest of the trees were hacked down due to their high toxicity.
 They even say the resin was used by the aboriginal population to poison their arrows’  head.
 Cuban biologist Juan Tomás Roig points out that the tree  “is highly caustic and some people are so allergic, that even the tree’s shade can cause skin affections, even swelling.
 However, Manzanillo is no land of poisons but of culture. The Orto Magazine, issued in Manzanillo (1921-1957) is a must do reference in the history of Cuban culture. A group of celebrated intellectuals like Juan Fransisco Sariol, poet Manuel Navarro Luna, Luis Felipe Rodriguez, and Julio Girona ( father and son ) convened here  the best of Cuban and the Spanish-speaking world, and were not themselves reluctant to consider themselves “ deeply in love with the city that was their cradle and which made them proud to belong to”.
 This echo has not waned, as the Original de Manzanillo band and the unbeated singer improviser Candido Fabré have dedicated their songs to the city.
 To this have contributed the troubadours and the whole population who enjoy the musical band parades at the central plaza with the famous Moorish gazebo, built after an inspiration on the Patio de los Leones in Granada, Spain.
 This the city of the big, hand organs, a sort of old knight at the time of synthesizers, with the cranks, bellows and music engraved in long perforated cardboard rolls.
  A tradition that came from Paris, which took root and had skillful manufacturers and players in the Fornaris and Borbolla families.
 In the 80’s in the last century, from this popular art rich land, there parted a  renovating force for the national radio system. A city determined on its endeavors as its straight streets.
  All this traditional knowledge flows through Rubén Beltrán’s veins, who would say he has a “naughty muse”. Not only with the brush, his versatility in art can come out from stained glass decoration or a shoe, “even in my dreams I can write a song”. In fact he has decided never to leave in his memory the ideas that come to his mind, one after the other, and probably he has filled several notebooks.
 Every step of the way, he sets the rhythm with his hands, his feet and his voice. His height would have made him a fine athlete, but he wanted to be a ballet dancer. No!! prejudiced voices cried. He has braided  his hair carefully, in resemblance to Sansón’s, and like the latter, they may say he is hiding, the  mystery unknown, and it is now part of his own image.
  Almost an unknown artist, he arrived to the Bacardí contest in Santiago de Cuba, and was awarded the prize, a well-deserved prize to a personal technique wrought up through his own effort, a deep and persistent identification with landscapes as if looking at himself in a mirror.
 From a drawing he was assigned to do, there came a surprise kiss, or something else has been born; however a very serious event in his life he has not committed to oblivion at all:
 “ I was a very clumsy student, and it was hard for me to draw a straight line... and used to mess up all the colors, and they want me out of the school, I don’t know, there was one teacher above all”.
 “And I was given a very difficult task: I had to draw a plastic tumbler to be foreshortened ( across and inclined towards me and  something on the background ) and it was placed on a high stool, over some cloth with folds and all. Behind the tumbler,  there was a white glass bottle turned over; then a round long necked green bottle, and then further on, another brown bottle almost black”
 “I had to do draw it with a pencil, a drawing like a black and white photo. It was very difficult because glass usually has so many lights, and transparencies, shines and dark spaces”.
“I wonder now why I was never nervous as I was separated from my classmates. First thing I did was tell myself “ I am the one”. But later on I believed ‘ I was taken there’.
 “ When I came in and saw the model, it looked so difficult. I did not say Why? or ‘ I can’t do it’.
 “This should have been a test for a fourth year student, but I felt I was able to do it as if I had done it before”.
 “I felt as you would when you get into the water, everything was far away...”

--And  finally.....?

“ And the professor I told you about asked me if I had been alone all the time, and yes...he could not do anything else.
 I got an A, the highest mark. I believe I didn’t do the drawing myself: ‘ I was taken by the hand’, to teach this gentleman a lesson”.
 
--You said you felt God, at least you had a first hand close experience about his presence. have you seen Him? Have you set yourself the task of painting God ?

“ I have never seen God in any painting, but I have seen his greatness, his immeasurable power and love. It is not my purpose to paint God, nor worship the creation over the creator. I would like Him to like my work, I would be content with that.