Pablo Cesar Amaringo

Pablo Cesar Amaringo (1938 – 16 November 2009) was an acclaimed Peruvian artist, renowned for his intricate, colourful depictions of his visions from drinking the entheogenic plant brew ayahuasca. He was first brought to the West's attention by Dennis McKenna and Luis Eduardo Luna, who met Pablo in Pucallpa while traveling during work on an ethnobotanical project. Pablo worked as a vegetalista, a shaman in the mestizo tradition of healing, for many years; up to his death, he painted, helped run the Usko-Ayar school of painting, and supervised ayahuasca retreats.
Amaringo was born the seventh of thirteen children in 1943 in Puerto Libertad, a small settlement on the banks of a tributary of the Ucayali River. When Amaringo was a boy, his family were reduced to extreme poverty after some years of relative prosperity. As a result, they moved to Pucallpa where Amaringo attended school for just two years before he was forced to find work to help support the family. When he was 17 Amaringo became extremely ill, nearly dying from severe heart problems. For over two years he could not work. He believes he was eventually cured due to a local healer.

 It was while recovering from this illness that he started to draw and paint for the first time. Amaringo began making drawings with pencil and shading with soot from lamps. From a friend employed in a car factory he got permatex, a blue substance with which he coloured the drawings. He had no money for paper so he used cardboard boxes. Sometimes he took a little lipstick and other cosmetics from his sisters. Later he used ink, watercolours and then a friend gave him six tubes of oil paint.
Soon Amaringo began to make money from portraits, but lost his market when photographers began to colour black-green-and-white prints. With the discovery of his new artistic talent Amaringo's career as a healer also received exposure for all wonderful things. For seven years, 1970–76, he travelled extensively in the region acting as a traditional healer. Until one fatal day when he couldn't heal any more because he cared more about art than his fellows around him.

 When Luna and McKenna met Amaringo in 1985 he was living in poverty, barely surviving by teaching English to young people from his home and selling the odd painting to passing tourists. Luna suggested he paint some of his visions, a project which became the basis of a co-authored book, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (North Atlantic Books 1999).
Amaringo occasionally gave interviews in the years following the book's publication, and later penned the preface for Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul (Destiny Books 2006). His artwork was featured in Graham Hancock's book "Supernatural". Amaringo also appeared in The Shaman & Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms (2010), Michael Wiese's documentary film about ayahuasca.
After a protracted illness, Amaringo died on 16 November 2009.Wikipedia

More

Robert Venosa

Robert Venosa (January 21, 1936 - August 9, 2011) was an American artist who resided in Boulder, Colorado, USA. He studied with what are termed the New Masters. His artworks reside in collections around the world.He first studied under Mati Klarwein in New York. Venosa then went on to study with Ernst Fuchs in Vienna. In the early 1970s he moved to Cadaques, Spain. Here he met and befriended Salvador Dalí. He later introduced H. R. Giger to Dalí.Venosa traveled the globe with his partner Martina Hoffmann, teaching their painting technique. The technique is a derivative of what Venosa learned from his teachers. His technique differs in the material used for the underpainting (caesin versus egg tempera) but largely follows the same processes.

His death on August 9, 2011 was the end of an eight-year battle with cancer.Wikipedia

"New York City born, Venosa was transported into the world of fine art in the late 60's after having experimented with psychedelics and having seen the work of the Fantastic Realists - Ernst Fuchs and Mati Klarwein in particular - both of whom he eventually met and studied under. Of his apprenticeship with Klarwein, Venosa says, "What a time (Autumn, 1970) that turned out to be! Not only did I get started in proper technique, but at various times I had Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Jackie Kennedy and the good doctor Tim Leary himself peering over my shoulder to see what I was up to.

That loft was the energy center in New York, and I reveled in it. And somehow,miraculously, in the midst of all the nonstop pandemonium taking place everyday I learned to lay the paint down properly. Even though it was ever putto the test , discipline was one of the more important necessities thatMati emphasized and - through his own adherence - strongly impressed onme: I could only join in the festivities after my work was done and allbrushes were washed. Mati taught well the techniques of painting and, evenmore relevant, of quality living. I'm honored to have been one of the fortunatefew to have studied with him."

Venosa moved to Europe in the early 70's settling in the celebrated Mediterraneanvillage of Cadaques in Spain, where he enjoyed the honorable and mightypleasure of getting to know and hang with neighbor Salvador Dali, as wellas the numerous notables in the world of art and literature who gravitatedto that magic locale. Much of Venosa's work and attendant exploits havebeen published in his book, Noospheres (Pomegranate Artbooks). In it Venosatalks of the attitudinal complications of his returning to the U.S. afteryears of living in Europe: "In 1982 - due to a number of commissions,commercial allurements and a burgeoning recognition of my work affordedthrough extensive exposure in OMNI magazine and on record album covers -I started traveling to the U.S., dividing my time there between New Yorkand Boulder, Colorado.Enjoying the clear, clean mountainair and relatively sane consciousness of its populace,

The admiration and aristocratic respect given the artist in Europe is strippedclean upon arrival in the U.S. as these architects of culture are transmogrifiedinto novelty items and entertaining curiosities. The centuries-old traditionof dedication and perfection while working in the solitude of a tranquilstudio at the limited speed allowed by brush and paint is left at the gatesof the rapid-fire, nonstop, instant-sensual-gratification American sitcomculture. Trying to compete in the fast lane of the high-velocity illusionsand banal delusions of movies and TV poses a problem for the painter andhis two-dimensional immobile images. Nevertheless, the challenge, then asnow, of affecting the consciousness with more eternal value cannot be denied,and so, combining the historical deep roots of European culture with thedynamic of America's youthful energy, an attempt is constantly made"...(www.venosa.com/bio.html )