I was hunched against the llama enclosure wearing mittens, my oil paints were stiff from the cold, but I was painting.  There I was at 14,240 feet above sea level, looking out at the remote saw-toothed peaks of Bolivia’s Cordillera Apolobamba and recording it in an oil sketch.  My Bolivia journey of 1994 was one of the most extraordinary events of my life.  Experiences from that trip have enriched my view of art making to this day.

Bolivia has been called the Tibet of South America.  High and remote it boasts dramatic and austere mountain landscapes and vibrant indigenous cultures.  For a person of my taste it is a natural tourist destination.    While I was initially drawn to the country by the climbing and trekking possibilities I soon realized that this would be an ideal opportunity to paint and draw new landscapes.  I organized the trip with a remarkable Bolivian guide service, Andes Expediciones, which provided a jeep, driver, guide and cook at extremely reasonable price.  Three of the four travelers on the trip were artists, painter and printmaker Maria Henle, painter Janet Morgan (my spouse) and myself.   We timed our trip around a total solar eclipse that cast a shadow across the clear air of the Andes on November 3rd.  Our destinations included a 19000-foot high volcano on the Chilean border, the largest salt flats in the world, mining towns, a vicuna reserve and remote hilltop villages.  Since we traveled by jeep I was able to carry oil paints and protect the wet paintings in a slotted box.  The six oil sketches I made at the Salar de Uyuni (salt flat), Condoriri (a mountain that looks like a perched condor), in the fabled village of Curva, the jungle town of Sorata and in the wild uplands of the Atacama Desert are all among my most treasured.  But it was our interactions with local people that deepened the experience.

 Curva is high on a mountain; a stone village perched above three thousand feet of steeply terraced fields.  Since Inca times the inhabitants of the villager have been known as great healers and diviners.   The road to Curva was new when we visited, a gift to Bolivia from the European Community.   While only a dirt road, it was a dramatic improvement for the people there, since it meant access to medical attention and brought other resources to this remote community.  With the road, Curva is now approximately a twelve hours drive from the capital La Paz.  We arrived on a quiet day, when most of the men were away, and sat in the main square to draw.  Naturally we attracted the village children who watched with shy attention.  Being friendly folks we satisfied their curiosity and showed them what we were doing.  Maria, who most often works from photographs, decided to tear up her drawing pad and share it out to the children.  She hoped they would participate in our creativity.  The children certainly accepted the large, good-quality paper with wonder, but she could not get them to draw on it.  It took more than a bit of conversation to understand what was going on.  They had never seen such large, beautiful sheets of paper—they were objects of beauty unto themselves.  It seemed just enough to hold the paper.   They never did draw on it while we were there.  I certain that whatever the fate of those sheets, they were treasured and revered.

 Late in the trip we took a few rest days in La Paz.  Take a city of over a million people, fold it along the main boulevard and fit it into a canyon and you will have La Paz.  My time in the city was divided between shopping for indigenous textiles and drawing, especially the colonial era Spanish architecture.  One of the most beautiful spots in the city is the Cathedral of Saint Francis, its huge Baroque façade carved from local brown colored stone fronting on a large plaza.   I came out to draw with my big bound drawing book and ink pens in the Plaza San Francisco on a bright, quiet morning.  The plaza is at the edge of the so-called “Indian Market”.   It is a place where fortunetellers, healers, shoeshine boys and performers gather.  One man with a two white llama was conducting a ritual that drew a big circle of onlookers.   I, however, was soon lost in recording the intricate ornament of the façade.  I drew, standing, until my hands were cold and my feet numb.  Nearly finished, I was suddenly aware of an acute silence around me.  When I looked up a hundred spectators were watching me.  More people were watching me draw than were watching the llama diviner.

 Bolivia has great weavers and many wonderful musicians.  However it does not have a strong tradition of representational art.  It is a country where an artist drawing in a public square is rarer than a man telling the future with white llamas.  And it is also a country where a sheet of drawing paper is an exotic item in a small town.   We forget sometimes how much we have going for us.  We North American artists have the good fortune to live in a country where the tools of our trade a readily and cheaply available.  Art school, museums and visual literacy are a part of our culture.  If less than perfect, they are at the very least something we all know about and can seek out.

 I left Bolivia with an increased sense of responsibility.  It is a privilege to have this knowledge, to have these tools, to have the time and leisure to study and develop my craft.  How could I consider wasting it?   We live in a world of limited resources; we ought to use what we have been given.   I think of those experiences in Bolivia often and they challenge me to be good and useful and generous with my art.

 In 1996 we four travelers had a reunion in St. Croix.  The three artists exhibited the work we had each created in Maria Henle’s gallery in Christiansted.  Janet had close to dozen 26” x 40” watercolors of goddess and wild animated mountain ranges.  Maria oils were vaster still, image within image canvases 40”x 60”, 70” x 50” etc, capturing the grandeur of highlands.   I showed my modest oil sketches and small several panoramas and found myself very proud of what I had done.