Bolivar was a well known painter of Ischia, Italy. He came to painting
late in life
as a way of calming his emotions. He accompanied me one an occasion,
each to paint a portrait
of a well known Italian lawyer. Halfway through the painting session, a
friend of the lawyer, a tenor singer,
dropped by and commenced stimulating his larynx, reverberating
throughout the property; he was a
big man with a big chest. This 'disturbance' made my friend Bolivar somewhat nervous and
frustrated. His
painting technique was using a large steel kitchen spatula to mix the oil
colours with white chalk powder, and using the same spatula with the flat
edge perpendicular to the surface
of the canvas and with a delicate movement, thrust the oil mixture on to
the canvas, producing a mountainous three dimensional result. His
paintings were always of a pastel hue as a consequence of the amount
of chalk he mixed with the oil colours, and required several months
drying time on a horizontal plane before they could be hung on the
wall.
However, as a consequence of the sound disturbance Bolivar proceeded to
thrust the spatula with the paint
sharply onto the canvas, making many jabbing motions. When we had both finished our respective works,
which may have taken about an hour and a half, I
asked him if he would hold
up his canvas that I may see the underside, and lo and behold, there were
several dozen slash marks
where the edge of the spatula had cut through the canvas. Bolivar needed peace when he painted.
He asked me on one occasion if I would take him with my car to
northern Italy to paint, as he so much wanted to paint landscapes.
He had not been out and about painting for ten years, and my arrival
on Ischia gave him a new stimulus to paint. But sadly I had to
decline his request as I could immediately visualise the logistical,
let alone the cost, of the project.
Bolivar lived for about 20 years in the
U.S.A., of which ten were spent in prison for the murder of someone
with whom he had a drunken brawl. It was in prison that the
psychiatrist suggested he take up painting as a means of calming his
emotions, and thus he took to painting like a duck to water.
I knew him as a kind gentle man; it was
he who introduced me to Sir William and Lady Walton.
More information about Bolivar will
be added
at a later date. |
