by William Thompson
AFS International

Today, Santos Arzú Quioto is a Honduran painter who travels the world showing his work. From Taiwan to Italy and Brazil, he shows his paintings as a means of communicating with other cultures around the world.

In 1980, however, he was just a high school student who had a passionate hobby drawing portraits in his notebook. He traveled with AFS to Albany, Oregon, USA, where he attended his first art class. “It was a great opportunity to develop my skills. I used to paint portraits with charcoal, pastel, stencil, watercolor, and many other materials.” He returned to Honduras and finished high school. At university, he studied not art but philosophy and economics. It wasn’t until 1990 that he returned to painting and had his first exposition. “I wanted to explore color and texture. I left the human figure. The size of the paintings became larger, and I moved from paper to canvas, which was a big change.”

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Santos never returned to art school after his class in high school. This keeps him open to new mediums and styles. “I will continue working with these materials,” he says, “but since I’ve never been to art school, I have to explore, to read, to keep painting.” His exploration of his work has brought great successes. He will travel to Brazil in September for an exposition, after showing his work in his native Honduras next month.

Santos has carried his intercultural experience with AFS with him throughout his career. His work is his means of communicating with those in other cultures.

“Art, and it doesn’t matter what kind—visual, performance—is a link between people. People are the same no matter where you are. Maybe you can’t speak the language, but people will smile at you or look you in the eye, and they know what you are saying. You don’t have to say many words. They look at the paintings and know what you are saying—even if they don’t like it.”

We applaud the work Santos has undertaken to contribute to a global artistic movement, and are proud to have him as part of the AFS global community. If you login to FindanAFSer.org, you will find Santos and 40,000 other members of the global AFS community that you can get in touch with.