MID-WILSHIRE : Artists Hone Skills at HOLA Workshop

Gerber Molina left El Salvador nearly four years ago. But when he paints, memories of his homeland guide his brush.

“I’m inspired by the things I’ve seen, the people I’ve known and the problems they’ve faced,” said Molina, 22, a budding artist who refines his technique each Saturday in an art workshop run by Heart of L.A. (HOLA), a youth program at Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd.

Many of Molina’s paintings, two of which he sold recently, are filled with images of barbed wire, guns, soldiers and orphaned children. But the deeply religious construction worker also includes more hopeful images of doves and divine lights in his paintings.

Molina began painting about a year and a half ago. He said he was spurred by a distant memory of a Salvadoran painter in his hometown near San Salvador, a village known only as Kilometer 11.

“One day I just bought a canvas to see if I had any potential and I found that I did,” Molina said. Some friends told him about the HOLA program and he has been a regular visitor ever since.

Barnaby Mendez, an illustrator and graduate of the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, volunteers as an instructor and works closely with Molina and other young painters.

“You can teach someone to paint, but beyond the basics they really need a gift,” Mendez said. “Gerber’s got something there, I think.”

Molina nodded in agreement. “God gives everyone a gift,” he said. “You just have to look for it until you find it.”

Because his parents were killed in a bus crash in 1980, Molina has been on his own since the age of 10, traveling first to Honduras and then to the United States to find work so he could send money to his two brothers and a sister in El Salvador.

He remembers the pain and suffering inflicted upon families by war and poverty. In Molina’s still life, “True Love of Mother,” fruit, a flower and a rifle are on a wooden table. The painting is about how war takes sons away from their mothers, Molina said.

“Instead of giving mothers love and food, the sons pick up the gun,” he said.

Molina said he will eventually look to the problems he sees in Los Angeles as inspiration for his paintings. His work has been exhibited at a Pico-Union festival and Downtown at the Broadway Plaza with other HOLA artists.

Selvin Nochez, 16, a sophomore at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, also attends the HOLA workshops and has sold four of his 30 paintings.

“I wish I could keep them all, but when you sell your paintings it helps you become known,” Nochez said.

Nochez and his family left their home near La Paz, El Salvador, 11 years ago. He has been back for visits twice but does most of his traveling with his imagination and his paintbrush.

Pointing to a peaceful rendering of a house in the woods by a lake, Nochez said: “I like painting places I wish I could be, places away from the city. Just painting them makes me feel like I’m there.”

Both Molina and Nochez find support and guidance at HOLA, which, in addition to the arts program, provides sports activities for nearly 200 youths each weekend.

When Molina first started painting, some of his acquaintances told him he wouldn’t amount to anything. “I had to separate myself from those people,” Molina said. Now, his friends ask him to do paintings for them.

Martha Cole, Mendez’s fellow instructor and a partner in a design studio called White Bread and Bean, said the students share their instructors’ high expectations.

“It’s neat to see when you give them the freedom to do something and they just kind of go with it,” Cole said.