The Sociedad Democracia hosts from this Tuesday the exhibition of Paco Betancort 'Looking at the Sea', an event framed in the 225th anniversary of the founding of the municipality of Arrecife as the capital of Lanzarote. The opening ceremony took place in the hall of the society.
Paco Betancort is a self-taught painter who started working at the age of 14, and now dedicates himself as a hobby to the activity of painting. According to the painter, when the time came for his retirement he decided to buy some canvases and oil paint to get out of the monotony and thus cover his free hours. From that moment on, he has been discovering a facet unknown until now: painting. With the aim of capturing in each of his works the seafaring Arrecife that he knew open to the sea. The first painting he painted was dedicated to Calle Real, a work composed of those stately buildings that continued with all the marina plagued with crabs, starfish, octopuses and the odd moray eel, before cement and asphalt destroyed so much life and beauty.
The painter, on more than one occasion, resorted to postcards and old photographs that he found to later capture them in his paintings with his brushes and colors, including Las Salinas de Portonao, the Charco de San Ginés, the Nuestra Señora de Las Nieves factory, the boats anchored in the bay of Naos, sailboats and sloops and a pier, Puerto Naos, which was open where fishermen, family members and visitors made use of it at all hours of the day, not as it happens today. Paco finds it hard to understand the reason why in a city like Arrecife 'Looking at the Sea', more and more walls are being erected on its coastline.
At the time of the inauguration, Paco had a few words full of emotion and longing remembering that Arrecife that he knew open to the sea and to the city compared to the current one, where they have destroyed and buried all the signs of identity of a seafaring people, converted years later into a city. The painter concluded by saying, "nobody gave me painting lessons and that's why I say that I am not a painter but I paint what I like so that future generations have some references of what Arrecife was. that I knew 'Looking at the Sea'.
The exhibition can be visited every day in the morning and afternoon until September 20.
