Lopez Island resident Steve Hill was one of 79 U.S. artists who went to Havana, Cuba as part of a special invitational plein air (on-site) painting tour organized by B. Eric Rhoads, publisher of Plein Air Magazine, Feb. 6-13. It was the largest group of artists to ever visit Cuba and with the specific purpose to paint from live subjects for more than a week. There were 25 spouses, art collectors and patrons along, as well.
“We all felt a sense of immediacy to record our impressions of a country that has been in a time warp for over a half century, before everything changes with the new open door policy now embraced by Cuba and the U.S.,” Hill said.
President Barack Obama, Raul Castro and Pope Francis have begun to establish more normalized relations and started talks to lift embargoes that have been in place since 1962. While there is still a long way to go, both countries have re-opened embassies (August 2015 – Havana and Washington D.C.) and U.S. citizens are now allowed to travel in Cuba, under government controlled classifications that include limited tourism and some educational/religious venues.
Here is Hill’s take on the trip:
We all stayed at one hotel about a 20 minute bus ride from the old city of Havana, where we painted four of the seven days during the organized tour. My wife, Judy and I stayed an extra three days just to paint and take hundreds of painting reference photos in the Vedado neighborhood and around the old city.
We rented a very nice apt, right across the street from the U.S. Embassy and just 500 feet from the famed Malecon Sea Wall that protects 4½ miles of the city from the ocean.
I was able to get one painting done along the Malecon at daybreak and during low tide, which is pictured here. At high tide those same waves hit the wall with enough force to send 40 foot waves over the top. Auto traffic is re-routed two blocks into the city when that happens.
Havana has a population of two million people, nearly 20 percent of the 11 million total people in Cuba. We explored as many nooks and crannies as possible there and never once encountered any bad city vibes. People went out of their way to be friendly and help us.
Our tour included a visit to Cojimar, the fishing village immortalized by famed author, Ernest Hemmingway (1898-1961), whose home there has become a museum and where his boat “Pilar” is also preserved under cover.
In fact, wherever we went in the Havana area, we ran into busts and sculptures of Hemmingway, little museums at hotels where he stayed, roped-off corners of bars and restaurants he frequented.
My first day painting in Havana was just across the street from “La Floridita” one of his favorites, although that bar does not appear in my painting, as I was far more interested in the warm light bouncing off the beautiful old buildings just down the street and “old cars” that have made Cuba famous.
Our Cuban guide explained that it’s forbidden for Cubans to sell those old cars, as the government has declared them a national treasure. As visiting artists, we were absolutely thrilled to see tens of thousands of these relics from the 1930s-1950s still driving the streets, wave after wave, like the clock had stopped a half-century ago!
Newer cars are totally the exception and the whole “car thing” speaks to the resiliency of the Cuban people to survive with little or no resources. They are expert mechanics and have learned to re-manufacture critical car parts, just to keep them running.
While Cubans still struggle with their economy (average wage is $90 per month and doesn’t matter if you are a doctor or street sweeper) “the times they are a changin’,” to paraphrase Bob Dylan. Street artists can and do make well over $1000-$2000 per month, a total reversal of the professional strata that exist among “visual artists verses doctors or lawyers” in the U.S.
But art materials and supplies are so scarce in Cuba that they are virtually unattainable. Most of their paint brushes looked like hardware store rejects after a bad year in the Mojave Desert.
Our group donated several thousand dollars’ worth of oil paints, brushes and pastel sticks to artists we found working around Havana. They have had to use gasoline as paint thinner and brush cleaner for 50 years – not good in any way, for either the artist or the painting.
Nonetheless, the quality level of their art is nothing short of outstanding and we all took note that they could execute some of the best “plein air” paintings we had ever seen. So much for superior art supplies!
That whole coping ethic flows throughout their culture like an electric undercurrent, from music (it’s everywhere!) to poetry, dance and a very high literacy/education standard. Our guide, a young woman in her late 20s was going for her PhD in writing and had a masters in economics. But like so many Cubans, she makes her extra income through tourism (the large tips we left for her) in order to have a better standard of living at present.
“Money can’t buy happiness” could easily be the mantra for modern Cuba, as they have learned to make do, just with what they have and embrace life to the fullest.
We had several serenades from incredible musicians on the streets wherever we painted, as if to say “Hey we’re really glad you’re here painting!” They would also engage us in conversations and clearly, were very glad we were there.
We must have heard “Guantanamera” the best known Cuban and patriotic song one hundred times– and just like the dozens of world famous musicians who have recorded the same, each rendition was given hauntingly and soulfully, as if it were the first time they had ever sung that piece. Chills, it brought chills down my spine.
One memorable day was spent at an old sugar plantation about an hour outside of Havana “Taoro” where I was able to get a small painting done and made a larger from my studio this week. The mode of transportation in the farmlands is mainly horse and wagon or buggy, rather like the Amish Country in Pennsylvania, but with very worn and tread bare vehicles; think lots of bailing wire. They do know how to make something out of nothing in Cuba!
As space does not allow a lot of paintings, I have photographed six of the eleven pieces I did while in Cuba, as a composite collage. Some of us are exhibiting our work back east (Annapolis, Md. and Florida) for two special invitational exhibits at major galleries for this Cuba trip, coming in May. These smaller paintings are all part of the “plein air process” and will allow me the best reference I can have in my Lopez studio, to the special Cuba light qualities and imagery, to create larger versions.
In the meantime, I will have several available for viewing, together with a video we have put together from our trip at my own gallery on Lopez. I will plan to have about 40 new paintings from this trip to Cuba, done within the next two months at Windswept Fine Art Gallery, 783 Port Stanley Rd., Lopez. Please call in advance to make sure the gallery is open. 360-468-2557.”
A short documentary video was made by the Plein Air Magazine staff from this trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?V=617LqZdfzVk
Steve’s Website: www.windsweptstudios.com
