Jesus Mari Lazkano is a professor at the University of the Basque Country and outdoor enthusiast known for his fantastic surrealist landscape paintings inspired by the Basque landscapes he encounters on a daily basis. At the Folklife Festival, he painted two innovative cerulean landscapes that amazed and entranced every visitor who walked by.

While working on the two grand landscapes, both of which he finished within the span of the Festival’s ten days, Jesus often paused to answer questions from visitors and engage in conversation in either Basque, Spanish, or English, offering advice, insight, and even invitations to the Basque country.

In this interview, Jesus talks about his process of imagining and re-imagining landscapes through painting, his ties to environmentalism, Basque environments, and his experience at the Festival.

Production and editing: Claudia Romano
Videography and photography: Pruitt Allen, Josué Castilleja, Andrea Curran, Cristina Díaz-Carrera, Albert Tong

Claudia Romano is a video production intern for the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and a student at Swarthmore College, where she studies anthropology.