With J. D. comes Juan de Dios Elybardi, a mordant and bony painter both in his talent and his body. He also treasures many paintings at home. They are made with dissimilar materials that show how these artists live. Juan de Dios survives by bartering paintings for food. He goes with his art works to the most intricate rural areas in Pinar del Rio Province and exchanges marine paintings for cheeses, a still life for rice, Mona Lisas for taro, yam and bananas... In absence of canvas, he uses cardboard or paperboard, which per him are great canvas’ replacements. He discovered that by sanding the back he can paint on both sides and thusly he can collect more food. On his last trip, he returned well stocked after bartering only two pieces: a bowl full of fruits to decorate the kitchen, with a rural landscape on the back, was exchanged for half sack of rice, and a twilight at sea, with a brittle blue sky on the back( showing an opening through which God appears to reprimand the world), was exchanged for a pig. Other painters have also a track record of committed talent to the visual art, despite their random lives and the oblivion in which they fell, like the prolific, dynamic and funny René Villar, in fatal decline; or Antonio " Ñico " Cepeda, who only gets ocher and yellow colors for his longing and muted art. Ñico ´ s paintings have the marked intimate accent of apprehension and nostalgia. Fishes dying and The Advent of Capitalism are the only works he preserves in his little room of madman, fisherman, diver and natural painter. He says that " I would never separate from them as long as I live, even for all the gold in the world."
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