Raúl Jiménez
Raúl was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico. A restless soul, he left the Island for New York at an early age. While there, he worked various jobs, one of the most memorable, at the iconic Plaza Hotel in NYC, where he enjoyed a brief friendship with world-famous Spanish painter, Salvador Dalí. According to Raúl, he was waiting tables at the Plaza Restaurant, when the famous artist, a regular at the Plaza back then, came in. Since his English was poor and Raúl spoke Spanish, he requested Raúl as his waiter and that became a custom. They got to know each other so well that one day Raúl, then 17, ventured to ask Dalí how he kept his mustache hard and shiny. “I use varnish,” Dalí replied, “I use it in my hair too.”
It is hard to tell whether this encounter with the artist had any influence in Raúl’s love for the visual arts. He taught himself to draw and paint by taking numerous courses by [snail] mail and then made a career as a Commercial Artist, working for advertising companies like McCann-Edison, back in Puerto Rico in his late twenties, and Xerox, in Texas, later in life.
Raúl’s talents were as diverse as the many techniques he used in his artwork. Not one to shy away from the spotlight, he was often the light of a gathering, telling stories, playing an instrument or, given the opportunity, intoning a song in his baritone voice. He loved music, taught himself to play the Cuatro (a traditional 5-string Puerto Rican instrument) and the keyboard. He also had a talent for the culinary arts. He combined these talents and put them to work during the years he had Papi’s, his restaurant in the heart of Ft. Worth, Texas, where diners enjoyed the flavors of his native Puerto Rico while being entertained with his music and songs.
In 1997, the Meacham International Airport in Ft. Worth, Texas, held an exhibition of Raúl’s paintings. Some of his works were also on display at the Beaux-Arts Gallery in Grapevine, TX.
Throughout his life he never stopped painting. He relished the process of art, from idea to sketch to study to final product. Watercolors, acrylics, oils, pastels; Southwestern landscapes, wrinkled old cowboys, city scenes; realism, impressionism, portraits by commission; humorous and often deprecating caricatures. Raul’s talent and love for the visual arts is latent in every trace and stroke. “I try to paint as much as possible,” he said in an interview for the Star Telegram in 1998, “Sometimes I spend the whole day painting.”
And that he did. At the end of his life, he had a collection of numerous works, all silent witnesses of his dedication to the one constant presence in his life: his love for the visual arts.
