At age fourteen after finishing six grades in school, Victor began earning money for himself and his family. With some of this money he bought art pencils, pens, and paper and began drawing.

When he was seventeen his father died, and Victor went to work full time in the fields in order to take over support of his family. He had to give up any notion of painting but continued to draw upon occasion.

In 1992 an accomplished woodcarver from San Pedro, Vicente Cumes, and I visited Victor to see his drawings. The pencil sketches, although somewhat rough, were brimming with action. Victor filled the compositions with people; they occupied the entire space.

Impressed by Victor's raw talent, we supplied him with some new brushes and scrounged oil paints, and showed him how to fix the canvas on a stretcher. Victor said he was not ready to paint and wanted to find a teacher, but he was persuaded to try. In a week he produced a very pleasing small painting, remarking that the most difficult part of the work was staying seated for long hours, something a field worker was not used to.

Victor has heeded Cumes' advice with admiral results. He has the all-over-the-place energy of a puppy and his enthusiasm spills into his paintings. He crams them with lively, active people and luxuriant plants.

Even in his early pencil drawings, it's clear that Victor draws from his own observation of the way things appear. This sets him apart from the rest of the painters of San Pedro and San Juan. They have all learned from each other and paint things the way they have seen them rendered in other paintings.

Victor's people may appear to be casually drawn, but when combined with the dynamic angles of their limbs and their acrobatic positions, this looseness of painting makes the figures seem ready to spring into action.

A keen observer of people, Victor lets a natural pattern emerge from the chaos of the various angles of head, arms, legs, hands, and feet ina scene rather than an artificial order. Individually and collectively, every figure is intrinsically involved in whatever activity is taking place, whether it is picking cotton or pulling a bus out of the mud. The children in his paintings, however, often focus on things unimportant to the accompanying adults.

With his incredible exhuberance Victor's art captures the essence of the Guatemalan people and their natural environment. Victor is the only painter to let the modern world intrude upon the traditional--trucks and buses appear naturally in his work. His paintings manifests the strength of spirit that has carried the rich culture of the Mayan people through hundreds of years of outside influence into the present day.

To contact us write: Arte Maya Tz'utuhil, P.O. Box 40391, San Francisco, CA 94140. If you need to talk to me directly, email me with your telephone number and I will return the call. I am currently moving my office.  Email me at .