Color blind painter from McAllen making big impression

McALLEN — The swirling colors of the sky with its flaming spheres and waves churning roll around the concrete irrigation pipe to give a new kind of movement and vitality to the iconic image of “The Starry Night.”

Erasmo Reyes’ rendition of the famous image of “The Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh is but one example of his success as a painter. So strong has been that success that he is able to support his three young girls with his art.

“I never actually pictured myself doing this,” said Reyes, 29. “I already have about two years or three years of doing murals. I do murals for businesses, daycares. I’m actually working on trying to get into a school district.”

He never imagined himself as a working artist and possibly no one else did either.

Why?

Reyes, it turns out, is color blind.

“I got held back first grade or kinder,” he recalled. “They actually thought I was dyslexic and it just turned out I couldn’t really pinpoint my colors. Mine wasn’t as severe. I do get mixed up with most of my colors, like blue and yellow, browns and greens, and reds and oranges.”

A challenge like that can create difficulties in any life. It would seem at first glance to make artistic endeavors impossible.

If he can’t see colors, how is he able to create a canvas mural of flowers exploding with bold reds and yellows and oranges and insects dashing through this sort of surreal garden? How can he make sunflowers and lavender butterflies and wide-looking eyes on another irrigation pipe, or a shark’s jaws wide open on a surfboard? How can he tattoo blue parrots and lotus flowers and the State of Texas on people’s arms?

Well, it’s actually quite simple –

Not!

“I just have a weird way of color matching,” he said. “I do everything on paper first before I spread it out there. My wife helps me out a lot with that. I have a color palette before I even start anything, so I know I’m going to do this with that.”

The secret to his navigation through the confusion of color is labeling.

“If I don’t label it and I forget, oh man, the color matching has to start all over,” he said. “I will literally paint it all white and start over again. I did that about four times on big pieces. I was almost done and I forgot to label. ‘Oh, dang. I have to just start over.’”

Such a challenge has compelled him over the years to approach art from a different direction. And in the changing of this approach from his challenge he has developed a unique thought process all his own. And this uniqueness shows in his art.

The tattoos themselves have a rather bold and abstract and thought-provoking appearance. Some show heavy lines moving in sharp angles across the skin canvas; others flow with thick and solid movements unwavering and beautiful and with a sort of timeless quality.

“I’m grateful for people that let me tattoo them because it’s for life,” he said. “I never gave a bad tattoo, but they were always there to help me out with the colors. I have a variety of inks, and I always let them choose their own colors.”

Tattoo ink is one of many mediums he uses.

“It’s a mixture of everything, from markers, sharpies, pencils, watercolors,” he said. “I’ve actually always been into art since I was in high school. I never really took it. I was an athlete. But I was drawing on paper and some of the teachers would say that I was creative. And any art projects that we had I did a lot of stuff by hand, and they would ask, ‘Who did this?’ and saw the artistic stuff that I had. I started focusing more on it in my 20s.”

The focusing more surely on his art work has certainly been a right choice, because his art has caught the focus of many people in many places. Some have even traveled from San Antonio and Laredo for his tattoo work alone.