Along with Benjamin Nicholas, Pen Cayetano is Belize’s most celebrated Garifuna painter. But unlike Nicholas, who lives in Dangriga, Pen Cayetano lives in Germany and he comes home every year for the month of November to bring in Garifuna Settlement Day. And he announces his arrival with the opening of an exhibit of his work. The tradition held and we today found him at the Belize Mexico Institute, holding court and reasoning on European art.

Pen Cayetano, Artist
“Ever since I found out that this culture is so rich and every year it is an opportunity to come to Belize to participate in the culture because missing out on this culture, I am missing out on a lot of things in my life. So I have to make it, it is a must for me to come every year and do this exhibition in Belize and music as well.”

Jules Vasquez,
Explain your experimentation or your flirtation with impressionism, neo-impressionism.

Pen Cayetano,
“Well since I left Belize I’ve seen many different types of art and many different types of techniques and I could say that I am in the time now with these modern artists who are living right now. For instance there is this guy who made this painting that he sold in London for certain amount of millions. I am living in his time. For instance like Louis Belisle, he was living in the time for Picasso and so the influence on art changes as how the time goes by. So many of my art right now would be having the subject of Belize but having many techniques of European kind of art.

As how life goes on and time change, like you said earlier the people born in the 80s won’t see what happened in the 50s and so and this is where the art steps in. The arts can document the time and the artist himself because artists can be interested in different subjects. But if you are an artist interested in cultural subjects, I can say I am going into abstract now, using the same subject of the Gatrifuna or the Belizean people and abstractize them. Well now that will have to be now an advanced way of art. People have to learn first about the natural way of the art before. For instance they say you have to learn your ABC before you learn them altogether and make a sentence and so.”

The exhibit opens on Thursday and everyone is invited to attend.