Belizean artist scores big on CLICO calendar

The competition was announced in April and artists from across the Caribbean responded with hundreds of paintings; but in the end only twelve made it unto the 2004 Corporate Calendar for CLICO, the Colonial Life Insurance Company. One of those dozen colourful images was the creation of Belizean artist Pedro Cruz. Aside from the international exposure, the effort also earned Cruz a cheque for twenty-five thousand U.S. dollars. News 5’s Patrick Jones asked him how he did it.

Pedro Cruz, Winner, CLICO Art Competition

“I submitted three pieces here at British Fidelity and one of the pieces won. The piece that won I named “My Life Esperanza”.

Patrick Jones

“Why “My Life Esperanza,” what does it mean?”

Pedro Cruz

“Well the picture depicts a beautiful Garifuna woman with a child. My life, it means that life of the lady that had an unfortunate situation with somebody and now has a child to take care of. Also, the word Esperanza is the name of a beautiful person, which also means hope in English. So a combination of that, why I picked that theme for my painting is just like many Caribbean countries, it’s a young beautiful country that we have, but because of foreign participation in our countries, like for example Britain and France, all these countries that abandoned us, they left us to take care of ourselves. And that is one of the issues that I used a lot and my emotional feeling when I was in the painting.”

Cruz’s painting is featured in the calendar for December. He recently returned from Trinidad and Tobago where he received his prize in a gala ceremony. CLICO retains the copyright on the painting for a year after which it reverts to Cruz. Cruz says he will use his prize money to work towards an exhibition of his paintings in March 2004. When not creating art, Cruz works as a tour guide.