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Este informe no está disponible en español. Orlando SentinelArtist Finds Peace, Inspiration In Higher PowerBy Kate SantichJune 3, 2001
On his second day in the United States, artist Armando Rivera was sitting in traffic with his wife when their rented car was rear-ended by a delivery truck. His left hand -- the hand he uses for painting -- was smashed into the dashboard. No bones were broken, but Rivera had soft-tissue damage in his fingers, lower back and neck. The pain was so great that for months he could sleep only three hours a night. When he tried to work, his movement was slow and deliberate. He needed to take frequent breaks to lie down. "That just turned my life upside down," he said, talking in his airy apartment in Hunter's Creek. For six months, he went to physical therapy, but still he has pain at unexpected moments. "But hard times -- they shape you," he said. "You paint with more determination. I think maybe the accident helped my art." At 29, Rivera, a striking, chiseled man not unlike some of the images he creates, knows something about hard times. In 1996, he lost his best friend to suicide, and two years later his grandmother, who helped rear him, died of cancer. Throughout his childhood, she had been his biggest supporter. "She was like a radiant sun," he said. At the time, Rivera, who had graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a degree in fine arts, was struggling in his career, too. Disillusioned, he had abandoned his artistic passions for business. "I was living for that paycheck," he says. "I was not living for my gift. There was a point when I was dead inside." After one especially difficult day he came home from his job as a contractor and prayed, though he had never been particularly religious, and then fell into an exhausted sleep. Sometime in the night, he said, "Something came over me, like a cleansing, like a cool balm. For the first time, I knew someone heard me." He had a dream of a beautiful woman singing in a church. Some months later, he met a young elementary-school teacher from Wisconsin, Meigan Petak, who had moved to the island for a position at a private academy. When she invited him to come with her to church one Sunday to watch her sing a solo, she was halfway through the song before he recognized the image. "Open your heart," she would tell him, "and you will see we are nothing without God." He soon returned to painting, and in January 1999, he and Petak married. Last July, they moved to Orlando. "God will send you angels if you ask," he said. It is a theme you can find in his work -- bold, vividly colored paintings of people both old and very young. Children are a favorite subject, often shown holding the string of an unseen kite. It is a metaphor of a connection to a higher power. Just this month, after linking up with local art promoter Victor Perez, Rivera has finally gone public with a piece called "No Hope?" It is on display at The Peacock Room on Mills Avenue in Orlando. "I was drawn to his passion," said Perez, creator of the annual Hispanic exhibit, "Art Con Sabor" (Art With Flavor). "I could see in his eyes that he wants to take his work to the next level. I told him, 'Create what you feel in your heart.' " Now Rivera is working on new paintings for a one-man show and contributions for the next "Art Con Sabor" in October. He is also negotiating with a woman who wants to open an art studio in Hunter's Creek, where Rivera would teach. These days, should his motivation falter, he opens up a tiny, palm-sized book, The Art of Van Gogh, and turns to a quote from the master: "You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things," it says. "I have found that ray," Rivera said humbly. "I have a gift, and now I know the giver."
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On his way. (Photo: JOE BURBANK/ORLANDO SENTINEL)