Sadly Pablo Amaringo died the other day. He was one of the world's most
favourite artists of Ayahuasca visions.
Pablo Amaringo (1943 - 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.
Pablo 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 Pablo
was a boy, his family were reduced to extreme poverty after some years of
relative prosperity. As a result, they moved to Pucallpa where Pablo attended
school for just two years before he was forced to find work to help support the
family. When he was 17 Pablo 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. Pablo 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 Pablo began to make money from portraits, but lost his market when
photographers began to colour black and white prints. With the discovery of his
new artistic talent Pablo's career as a healer also received exposure. For
seven years, 1970-76, he travelled extensively in the region acting as a
traditional healer.
When Luna and McKenna met Pablo 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 - ISBN
1-55643-311-5).
Since the publication of this book in 1999, Amaringo had not produced any
further writings about his work apart from occasional interviews. In 2006,
however, he reappeared as a writer, penning the preface for a new book on plant
medicines, sacred hallucinogens, and shamanism, called Plant Spirit Shamanism:
Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul (Destiny Books - ISBN
1-59477-118-9). After a lengthy battle with illness, Amaringo passed away on
the 16th of November, 2009.
