New artist exhibits at Bliss

A new artist is displaying his works at the Belisle Art Gallery in Belize City. Patrick Jones stopped by for a look.

They are the work of an up and coming artist … and what they lack in color the paintings of Omar Sanchez-Rivera, make up for in originality.

Omar Sánchez-Rivera, Artist

“The messages are history, ecology and culture. It relates how the history of Belize has been affected and the ecological system of Belize has been affected and how our culture has been affected during all these which relate to each other.”

Originally from El Salvador, Sánchez uses a paint brush to present his own historical perspective of two nations.

Omar Sánchez-Rivera

“What inspires me to paint is the mere idea of my own history. My own life. The painting themselves represents my life, what my mind has soaked form the history of my life. I come from a country where it is over populated, it holds large cities and you have a poor ecological system. Now I find myself into another country that is totally different from culture, from history, from ecology. If you would look into history, in my country, El Salvador was conquered, their liberty was written by blood and Belize is different.”

Eleven pieces in oil and acrylic done on bristol board and canvass adorn the walls of the Belisle art gallery for the next week and a half. Although he’s been painting since Infant school, this is the first time Sánchez has ventured outside the island of Caye Caulker to present his work.

Omar Sánchez -Rivera

“This painting is called controversy … This is not bright because it is a hard painted criticism to what man is doing to our ecological system. Now what happen here, because of his own ambition he is cutting trees, he is exterminating the environmental way of their own habitat. You see the skeleton here of animals, he’s leaving the animals with no habitat. They will have nothing to eat, its a desert behind, its wilderness behind, so he will have a sad end.”

“This painting is called sad princess protest. If a Mayan princess would have lived in this time, she would have protested in this way. Look at her past. That’s a Mayan ruin, this is a river, that means the past ages. And herself with earring, jade earring in jade colors and then we have a woven cloth, a Mayan woven cloth but recently it passes to another civilization, which we come to this kind of civilization, big factories, engines, they have come to take place, different civilization, they have established a different kind of environment and then this line itself represents the present tense. Now what will it be after a while so this white part represents uncertainty. We don’t know what will happen next.”

While we may not know what will happen next historically, Sánchez says his plans are to continue painting until one day he is history. Patrick Jones, for News Five.

The paintings are on sale, with prices ranging from seventy five to three hundred dollars.