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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