Pen still going strong with brush and guitar
It’s quite an honour to be considered an icon in the fickle world of the arts. But what if you’re a legend in two artistic pursuits: painting and music? Welcome to the world of Pen Cayetano.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
From the Wanaragua to the Mahogany Logs to Punta Night, the latest creations to spring from the artistic brush of Pen Cayetano are showing at the Mexican Institute in Belize City. Thirty-two pieces make up this latest art show, and although he makes his home in Germany, Cayetano says his navel string is still buried in Belizean soil.
Pen Cayetano, Painter
“Most of my paintings represent Belize all the time because Belize is my home and it has more to me to offer than any other home in any other place. I born in Belize and I start off with Belize, and Belize is very important to the world as well. So my paintings always reflect on Belize because it’s an important country.”
That importance has driven the fifty-year-old artist to use his many talents to make his mark on the pages of Belize’s culture and history.
Pen Cayetano
“History is very important right now for Belize as a developing nation. As far as I am concerned, from what I have seen, they haven’t got many paintings on the wall that depicts the history of Belize. So my paintings at this time are depicting the history of Belize and it’s something new. And this is the era for artists and art to be painted on walls and making history in our own country because it hasn’t happened yet.”
“I prefer the oil on canvass because it’s permanent, it’s strong and I think its durable that it can take a lifetime. And I think Belize needed those kind of canvass because this country is a developing country. And you know, art has to be strong to preserve to survive.”
And Pen Cayetano is no stranger to charting new courses in the art field. Although the focus of this exhibition, which runs until November twenty-seventh, is on his paintings, Cayetano is also giving visitors a taste of Punta Rock, a genre he pioneered starting with the original turtle shell band.
Pen Cayetano
“Although I play in different bands before, inna different bands all over, Corozal, Orange Walk, the borders and so. And then I come back to Dangriga and I said yeah, I think it was loosing a lot of the culture. And I was looking at it how it was going down, and Isabel Flores, Hilberto and all them people couldn’t help me because they were just tired after all them days of John Cunu, so I said mien, I have to do this. The first song I made, the first Punta Rock song that come out was “Misinalibu”. And it was a song about people moving from here to the Americas, loosing their loved ones, come back to Belize and they done find their life broke up; that’s the meaning of misinalibu. And that was the first hit in the Punta Rock music in Belize.”
Cayetano invites the general public to come for the music, but stay for the paintings and walk away with a better appreciation of one segment of the nation’s many cultures.
Pen Cayetano
“I would like the general public, the schools, just everybody who is interested to see some of their culture and history, just everybody to come in, just for the painting them and see what’s happening in their own country and the world and stop the violence and live culturally.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
Pen Cayetano’s Culture and History art exhibition opens tonight at seven-thirty. The paintings are available for sale with prices ranging from five hundred and fifty to eight thousand dollars. In related news, Cayetano will dedicate a studio and gallery in Dangriga on Thursday of next week. Some of his earliest paintings along with Garifuna artefacts will be on display there until the end of the month.
