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A Bermejo Red Colored Life - Interview with Roberto Bermejo
Text & Photos by Silvia Álvarez - June 2007.
The noise of the city drove him to leave his gallery and to return again to his house, located high above, on the side of one of the hills surrounding the town. From his terrace he can see a large part of the bay therefore he does not need any additional inspiration in order to take the brushes out to use them to paint those sensations on canvas, that nowadays are well-known and recognized by many through his pieces of art.
A jovial Roberto Bermejo receives me at his home that he just finished to equip also as an Art Studio and Workshop.
Talking with him about his life dedicated to colors is like following a winding dirt track full of semi-darkness where nevertheless the beauty of the path is never lost. Refreshing winds of humor merge with the shifts of our conversation which were enjoyed at the dining room table with a beautiful side view of Puerto Vallarta.
How was Robert Bermejo, the painter “born”?
“In elementary school I made a drawing of the Niños Héroes (Child Heroes), and everyone congratulated me and it was then that I realized that I was good at painting and I continued doing it. When I had to decide on a career I chose a career in art and design. During those days Icame across a book of impressionists and I saw that all of them had starved to death; and since I was a young idealistic  teenager I decided that I was also going to die of starvation and I was going to post large bills on the walls in order to at least earn the crust of some stale bread. I thought that I would never marry and I went to San Carlos. It was only until I was just a bit more mature and after having developed a high level of hormones that I wanted to see what was beyond the mountains, so I went to Tijuana, where I remained for a year after which I returned in order to take study courses. For ten consecutive years during the summer I lived in San Miguel de Allende.
How did you come to Puerto Vallarta?
Mexico City began to look very overwhelming and I decided to return to Tijuana where I remained for almost 18 years. I had a client there who would buy my paintings in order to sell them here in Vallarta. He made me the proposal to go to Puerto Vallarta because my paintings would sell very well. I asked myself, to Vallarta? At the beginning I refused but since Tijuana also has a low season –exactly opposite to Puerto Vallarta– I decided to visit this port. At first it was difficult, when I arrived here there were many details that seemed strange to me, for example in the waiting line at the post office I noticed that women had very hairy legs and I asked myself why they were so different from the those in Tijuana. They seemed so conservative! Little by little I fell in love with Vallarta. Later I married and I had children.
The situation did not look too bright in Tijuana and I refused to go and live in the United States where I would be a foreigner all my life. My eyes turned again towards Vallarta and I began to come and stay during the high season. In those days there was hardly anybody here, I arrived with a big load of paintings and I returned with money in order to maintain my family. That is how I did it.
What did your first pictures look like, what were their subject matters?
They were nude drawings and then you paint whatever people request. If you want to make a living being a painter you have to alternate between things that you can sell and things that you like yourself, otherwise it will not work. I began to paint castles, galleons, boats, and nautical themes. When I arrived here I fell in love with the small streets, the women with the hairy legs, the atmosphere, the hills, the vegetation, the bay and everything began to be a part of my life. I observed old walls and I began to see how people were aging together with them on the streets. Then in 1980 I came here with my whole family.
Do you remember the first picture you sold?
I don’t remember it exactly, I took it to a gallery in Tijuana together with a friend who was a painter and he helped me because he took me to several galleries who began to sell my paintings. During that time paintings were the boom in Tijuana, just as they were here in the eighties, there was a tremendous demand, I even had to hide from my clients because I could no longer supply them.
How were you received by Vallarta?
When you are painter and you have your wife and three children to maintain, your children don’t care whether you want to be a bohemian and artist, they want bread on the table three times a day. So, I had to go out and find work to make money, so I painted on the street. Later we formed a group with the plan to take turns to show up at a certain meeting place in order to sell, but we know that easily people break their agreements nevertheless I stayed and continued because I had a family to support.
 There was an annex in the Encino hotel that had commercial stores and I asked the owner if he would rent me one of the shops and he said yes, as soon as their construction was finished. This caused me to laugh and I asked myself: well what about if he will rent it to me as he said?....and I did not even have the money to pay for the rent because I lived from hand to mouth on a daily basis!
By that time the gentleman who is called "El Querreque" ordered a huge painting of the river laundresses, it was the kind of painting I was doing, and in those days wherever you looked there was a motif for a painting, you did not have to search for one, and the Cuale river was a fabulous subject-matter... I painted very many Cuale River paintings.
The sale of that huge painting of the washer-women provided me with the money to rent the store and to put my gallery on the Encino Street. In those days it was called "Gallery, Studio and etc." I named it that way because I did not know how to call it and I did not want to use my name, although later the women teased me because they addressed me saying: hey, why don’t you give me two kilos of etc.?
Later I decided to buy another store in Villas Vallarta and another one in the shopping mall located in front of the Rio hotel and I got so far that I had 4 stores. I realized then that I could not paint more than what I was already painting. In those days a man offered me to sell T-shirts and at first I did not want to do that, I said to myself: "how am I going to put a signboard here that says T-shirts and picture frames" (I told myself amidst laughter) but I thought about it more and I left an area for T-shirts and as soon as I displayed them there they began to sell like warm buns. People looked at the paintings but bought the T-shirts. For the first time I knew what it meant to have money without working for it; that night I could not sleep thinking about those women in Mexico City who were manufacturing T-shirts for a lousy pay... I felt that this money belonged to them and that I was stealing it from them. But such is life and I continued with my work.
Subsequently other galleries began to invite me to exhibit, one of them was Gallery Uno.
At the moment do you consider yourself a representative of Puerto Vallarta?
I think so, because even though people don’t remember that I have had exhibitions with other very successful subject-matter, I always return to painting my small Vallarta alleys because that is what I like. You have to be honest with what you like besides I make my living through painting Vallarta and I think I have sold hundreds or maybe even thousands of paintings of Vallarta. I have painted a lot for almost 20 years, in addition to posters and greeting cards that I have also designed.
Which part of Vallarta do you continue to like in spite of the passage of time?
Look, although everything always changes, here I find it is done accidentally, for example above the Gringo Gulch. Unlike other places like San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Zacatecas, where a real effort is made in order to preserve the city, here we have been quite apathetic about this matter and we think that by having any arbitrary structure with a gabled roof it is the style of Vallarta. This is a pity and we definitively should defend and preserve this typical part of our city.
Which Vallarta painters do you feel have influenced you?
All painters are influenced by everybody else. I identified myself a lot with Daniel Inchaurregui [father of Ada Colorina] because he painted the same subject-matter as I, with the exception that he had a very perfectionist style of drawing and his colors were very realistic, he used a lot of grey colors. I did not, I preferred to follow my own feeling using violet and blue colors the way they came out of the tube almost without diluting them and many people hated me because they would tell me: "turn your painting off for a little while because it is wearing out my eyesight”, but then there are other people who like it for exactly the same reason.
Who are your clients?
Mainly North Americans, but also Canadian and some Mexicans. It gives me great pleasure when sometimes while walking through the streets of Vallarta I see the drawings that I framed and hung up on the walls of some houses. And some restaurants still have pieces of my work.
Will Roberto Bermejo continue to paint the same motifs?
Yes, I will continue with the same. I will never drop Vallarta because I love to paint it, but in addition to that I continue to work on other subject-matters as well. And there is another more important point: "it is not what you do but how you do it". When people finally recognize your style, it is very good.
Bermejo Art Studio and Workshop
386 Río Colorado Street • Colonia Agua Azul
Phone: 222-6076 • E-mail: rojobermejo@hotmail.com
• Visits via previous appointment
Silvia Álvarez
E-mail: silvialvarezb@yahoo.com.mx
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