Milton Bernal - Pintor Del Tabaco

A week or so ago a painting appeared in my Facebook news feed of Alejandro Robaina. I was immediately struck by the image, and sat in wonder at how much the artist had accomplished with so deliberately limited a palette.

You see, Senor Robaina holds a very special place in my heart even though I never met the man. He, through his tutelage of my dear friend A.J. Fernandez, has blessed me with more knowledge than I ever imagined I could attain about cigars and tobacco.

I immediately set out to discover more about the artist, Milton Bernal, and what I've discovered is that I'd somehow managed to overlook one of the most amazing of talents.

This morning as I had my coffee I summoned up the courage to contact Senor Bernal, and ask his permission to try to bring awareness of his work to my readers, and he graciously agreed. So I give you just a taste of what he does, but implore you to delve further into his work yourselves, and come away as awestruck as I have become.

Here's what's remarkable: every painting incorporates tobacco into the creative process, and not just as you might assume. Bernal manufactures his own papers of vegetable fibers, paints the initial images in oil, and then carefully incorporates either pigments from, or actual overlays of tobacco into each.

Many of the paintings reinvent historic masterpieces using these techniques in imaginative new ways that simply astound. Others, of his own creation, are so distinctly unique that he may well have developed a style that others will emulate far into the future.

I encourage you to take a moment, look at his web site, and then research deeply beyond that. As La Musa kept putting it when she reviewed his portfolio today: "Wow!"

To learn more about Bernal and the processes he uses to create these marvelous works read this interview from Progreso Weekly