SEPTEMBER 5, MONDAY

PERUVIO

All the time that I was responding to the folk artists featured in the visiting exhibit at the Asheville Art Museum, I thought about Peruvio.

Peruvio lived in Asheville most of his life. His real name was John Barnwell, but his artist’s name, his mythical name, was Peruvio but as Susie reminds me he called himself Fred. He did odd jobs, working for a while in a shop selling tie dye clothing on Haywood Avenue, not far from his subsidized housing apartment building just down the street. There he lived in a small two room apartment that was so full of his paintings, all precisely arranged among his magical rocks and stones and statues, that you could barely turn around. All of his portraits were similar, rounded figures with stylized dots and circles arranged in stylized forms. They were mythic figures that came to him in visions and were as clear and real to Peruvio as the person standing in front of him.

My daughter, Susie, was a friend of Peruvio. They often talked on the phone and several times we visited him in his small exotic apartment which he kept rearranging. He had a beautiful voice and would sing for us, accompanying himself on the guitar. He was always bubbling with excitement, always dreaming, always sensing mythic figures around him.

I only know of one exhibit of his work. It was on February 10, 2014, in Downtown Book and News, a second hand bookstore, on Lexington Avenue in Asheville, owned by his friend Emoke B’Racz, a Hungarian who left communist Hungary and came to the United States and founded Malaprops Book Store, the literary heart of Asheville. Emoke cared for Peruvio and supported him and made the opening night a great success as a wide assortment of Peruvio’s friends showed up.

Peruvio over time sold a few of his paintings. We bought a portrait of my daughter Susie which she treasures. But this night was the high point, I think, of his artistic success. Peruvio liked attention and being recognized, but he didn’t need recognition. He was driven by dreams and visions and needed to paint and paint mythic figures as they appeared to him.

Peruvio died during the pandemic, not of Covid, but was allowed no visitors, so we couldn’t say goodbye, and then suddenly he was gone.

But as I was photographing the folk art exhibit and reading the stories of the various artists I realized that I had known in Peruvio an artist just as talented, just as driven to create, just as deserving of recognition as anyone in the exhibit, even Grandma Moses. And I feel very lucky to have known him.

Peruvio’s Exhibit https://www.flickr.com/gp/billybaba/Z4m693W75U