The Chatham Record, Thursday, August 24, 2006

RETIRED DOCTOR TURNS TO ART IN TIME OF ILLNESS

By Milburn Gibbs

Dr. Eduardo Lapetina, of Chapel Hill, retired from medical research when his multiple sclerosis worsened in 2002, and began to pursue art as his new passion.

Even in the field of medicine, health problems can cause people to have to retire early. If a noted medical researcher is hit with multiple sclerosis, what is he to do?

One could kick back, enjoy friends and sink into inactivity, but for Lapetina, life's struggles only made his second career as an artist all the more genuine.

Lapetina had a humble background, born to Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina. By 1976 he had migrated through a fellowship in London to North Carolina to do cardiovascular research in thrombosis and arteriosclerosis, which led to breakthrough discoveries.Many would credit a 2002 class he took from Jane Filer at the Carrboro ArtsCenter for fueling his desire to paint, but his interest started long before that.

"I traveled extensively around the world during my thirty-five year research career," Lapetina said. "It was then that I developed a taste for art. I went to many of the finest museums around the world and began collecting paintings at this time in my life."

Lapetina the collector became Lapetina the artist, thanks to Filer's class."When I fully retired, I had no idea what to do with my life," Lapetina admitted. "I had never taken an art class in my life; I knew nothing about painting, though I have always loved art.

"Jane Filer is a wonderful painter and an incredible teacher. Since then, I have started to paint all day every day. I went to her classes with all of the work I was doing at home. She was very supportive of my work."The collecting public has been supportive as well. In his first exhibit in Greensboro, Lapetina sold over 30 paintings to a crowd that had no prior knowledge of his work as a scientist.

Lapetina's allure is his use of color, and an imaginative array of techniques. It seems that whatever "it" is, Lapetina has tapped "it" to find a style that sings out to North Carolina, and collectors abroad as well.In April of 2003, his painting "Pain in Spain," won an award in a juried art competition, and was sold to a collector. The terrorist Madrid train bombing inspired the painting.

His paintings have been exhibited in a number of local galleries including Side Street Gallery in Pittsboro, Sizl Gallery in Carrboro and the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh.

Lapetina has just returned from an art colony in Macedonia, in which 38 artists from all over the world were invited. He traveled extensively as a lecturer and medical researcher, but had no idea his art would garner invitations in three short years.

He has met Sergej Andreevski and Robert Cvetovski at the Cedar Pass artist colony, organized by local artist Doug Stuber. This connection gave Lapetina a chance to show European artists what he could do, and they were impressed.

"There is some correlation between scientific research that I did in the past and my actual concentration on paintings," he compared. "When you do scientific experiments, you do not know what the results will be. When I start my paintings, I don't have preconceptions, I follow the colors and shapes in a very emotional way. The result is always like a new discovery."It is most interesting to see the reaction of people to my paintings. They see things I did not think about. At that point, you believe that the observer is finally making the painting."

Karen Shelton has shown his paintings in her Sizl Gallery.

"Lapetina is this area's most successful emerging artist," Shelton said.

"His paintings explode with color and emotion and they are delightful in their spontaneity and free use of paint. His work is incredibly impressive. I have never seen an artist progress as he has."

Although Lapetina spends more time walking to and fro than most, he works on his art until it is finished. If there ever was an artist whose work "kept him going," then Lapetina is one of them.

The Chapel Hill News (NC) May 26, 2004

Artist blends intellect, creativity for joyful results

by Valarie Schwartz

Staff Writer

For years Eduardo Lapetina held his creativity inside. Now he strokes it onto canvas after canvas, emptying tube after tube of acrylic paint, his emotions mixing with the paint that flows out and down the vertical surface onto the wooden easel and block of rug under it.

The result conceals little; his emotions have been splashed out into colors. His joy, pain, serenity and rage are laid bare. Regardless of hue or random pattern, one thing cannot be denied from looking at Lapetina's work: Apathy does not exist in this man.

Lapetina exudes joy, even when sitting in front of his most recently completed canvas with its mix of passion and pathos.

"This is called, I think, 'War in Iraq.' It is many, many layers -- 10 at least," Lapetina said.

He finished the painting Friday morning after beginning it Tuesday while the latest reports from the war-infected country flashed from his television. He had started it before the paint was dry on his previous work, "Ancestral Roots."

Each of his abstract paintings has layer upon layer of paint. The final effect remains a mystery until the canvas strikes him as complete.

He does not know how he does it.

"I don't know anything," he said, smiling. "I just start with colors and shapes, and they direct me."

Born in Argentina of Italian immigrants, he grew up speak-ing both Italian and Spanish.

"I grew up in an Italian family, speaking Italian," he said. "My grandparents never learned to speak any other language. There was a lot of food and love."

At the age of 15, he became very sick and spent seven years in and out of hospitals as one wrong diagnosis after another held him hostage to the institution of medicine. The experience also provided him the opportunity to change the pattern for men of his family, who went into the family business (manufacturing wine barrels) as soon as they could, forsaking higher education.

"I was the only one in the family who went to a university because I was sick," Lapetina said.

Not surprisingly, he went into the field of medicine, specializing in cardiovascular research. While a post-doc fellow in England, his research paid off.

"I made a very important discovery that was published in journals," he said.

The notoriety that followed brought an invitation to work in the United States, where he spent 20 years with Burroughs Wellcome -- until it merged with Glaxo.

"People over 50 were given special packages to leave," he said.

He took the package and moved to Cleveland, where he taught medicine at Ohio Weslyan University for four years. Then, five years ago, after missing the good weather and friends of Chapel Hill, he returned to the town where his three children had graduated from Chapel Hill High School.

"When I came back here, I saw people who had left Burroughs Wellcome when I did, who had started small biotech companies," he said. "I went to work at Cato Research." He worked for Cato for about four years.

"I suffer with multiple sclerosis," Lapetina said matter-of-factly. "My condition got worse, and I took disability in 2002. I didn't know what to do with my life."

All he had to do was look around his house for a clue. All those years of research required international travel, from which he never returned home empty-handed.

"I took at least eight international trips a year," he said. "And every time I went to museums, met artists and bought paintings, not expending very much money because I had three children to put through college."

He collected with a passion, buying what he liked. Not only do the wall spaces of his home reflect his interest, but a wide, curving couch holds overlapping art pillows, a large display case is filled with glass, marble and ceramic "eggs" and there are collections of crystals. Visiting eyes do not rest once inside his Chapel Hill home.

One day, while looking in the paper, he saw that a painting class taught by Jane Filer was starting in 45 minutes. He grabbed his cane, jumped in his Volkswagen Beetle and hummed over to the ArtsCenter in Carrboro.

The class was in progress as he walked in. Filer remarked that he had no supplies with him, and he explained that he had just learned of the class.

"He was very, very friendly," Filer said. "He's a very warm, loving person."

Filer was painting when Lapetina walked in.

"I'm a stubborn person as far as my art's concerned," she said. " I don't EVER do what people tell me to do."

As she was demonstrating different color values and applications, she got a suggestion.

"Eduardo sits down next to me and says, 'I think you should put a big sun right in the middle.' I thought, This painting stinks anyway . . . oh, why not try it," Filer said. "So I painted a big sun in the middle."

Her other students were amazed to see her trying such a suggestion. But he had been wrong. The sun didn't fix it. "He had other suggestions, and I tried them all. He was wrong," she said. "I said to Eduardo, who's telling me how to paint, and he doesn't know how, 'Are you a famous painter?' He said, 'You go to the Web and check out my Web site.' I said, 'You go and check out my Web site.' I said, 'Now look, Eduardo, after what we've been through the first day, you come back. You better not be one of those people who come in here and I never see you again.' He grabbed my hand and said, 'I will come to every one of your classes.'"

He had already decided that he would become an artist.

Each did the Web site check and returned duly impressed with the other and the student/teacher relationship endured, developed and progressed into a friendship.

"She's an incredible teacher," Lapetina said. "She's very stimulating and optimistic. Every piece I did, she found something good. If she had been rigid, I don't think I would have gone on. She's a wonderful painter."

"He's a man who moves from his heart -- he's very intelligent but shoots from the hip," Filer said.

Lapetina arrived at each class with about 10 filled canvases (at first with the cardboard kind, not the stretched ones). "I would limit myself and try not to spend more time with him than other students," Filer said. "He devoured the critique and kept trying and working, and he progressed. He's got a perfect blend of intellect and creativity. That's very rare. You have to have an imagination to research and discover things. It's amazing to come from a background that's so precise, then to do something so creative."

After taking two courses with Filer, Lapetina learned of a graduate student at the University of North Carolina, Kimowan McLain, and audited a class with him.

"He has a different technique and approach to painting," Lapetina said. "I profited a lot from him."

The combination of knowledge from the two teachers paid off.

"Three hundred and sixty-five days after walking into my class, he won an award in a juried art show," Filer said, still amazed at his quick climb.

He has since had two one-man shows, just won another award in the Fine Arts League of Cary Art Exhibition, and this week signed a contract with the Sizl Gallery in Carrboro, where his art will be on display and where he will have a show next winter.

"I feel I have never been so happy or free in my life," Lapetina said. "I have the same dedication, passion and enthusiasm for painting as I had for science."

He approaches each with the same degree of wonder. "When you start a scientific experiment, you never know what will be at the end," he said. "It's the same with painting -- when I begin, I've no idea what will be at the end."

"As civilization develops, it's forever changing and art is a reflection of all of that," Filer said. "Science is like that. You take the work that someone has done, read the reports, analyze and learn from work that's been done before, then you take it one step further -- always open to things happening in the world."

After years of studying art on his own, Lapetina applies paint with textures borrowed from current events. Two of his paintings were selected for the Cary art show -- "Melting Towers: In Memory of September 11, 2001" and the award-winning painting was "11 March 2004: Pain in Spain."

"This community is rich with good artists, and he's talking to them and inviting them to dinner. But it's not a free lunch," Filer said laughing.

He implores every artist to talk about fine art. "Art is intellect to a certain degree and then it's not. It's emotional," he said.

"This town has a lot of interesting people in it," Filer said.

"Eduardo Lapetina is one of them."

Copyright 2004 by The Chapel Hill News