The Story of Paulette Salo

Guest Blog by Ron Delvalle

The moment you meet Paulette Salo, you feel wrapped in the warmth of her smile and the aura of her personality. This was the feeling my wife and I had when we first met Paulette on a staycation on Caye Caulker, our sister Belizean island. I would later discover this was for good reason, as you will soon understand for yourself. Be that as it may, don’t be misguided into thinking she is meek. To the contrary, Paulette is and always has been a maverick; charting her own course on the road less traveled and blissfully tossing aside the need for approval and structure.

Paulette owns and operates The Red Flower Gallery on Caye Caulker. She has made a good living over the years painting murals and most anything with her medium of choice being acrylics. She has taken on some very large commissioned assignments in a host of places across the country. But this wasn’t always the case.

Born in Minneapolis Minnesota, she lived there, nearly exclusively, for the first 72 years of her still young life. Being raised in an upper middle class family, Paulette describes herself at a young age as being a “privileged brat”, maverick was the label that I gave her. Follow along and decide for yourself as she shares her story with us.

With a successful father working as an Executive Vice President for a large US company, Paulette was afforded the opportunity to travel at a young age. She visited much of Europe before the age of 20. At this point in her life, she had dreams of playing the piano as a sort of female Roger Williams, an artist she admired at the time that played more popular than classical music. Her father didn’t want her wasting her time on such non-essential artistic things and felt that she wouldn’t be disciplined enough to practice and stick with it anyway. He explained that she needed to pursue a career based education. Paulette chose bio chemistry with a minor in music allowing her to follow her desire to play the piano. Upon graduation, Paulette provided for her growing family by working full time as a bio chemist and painting in the evenings and on weekends to bring in additional money as she had done for her last 2 years in college.

The Love of Painting

Having done her first painting at age 10 while in the local 4H Club, Paulette discovered a talent and passion that would remain with her throughout her life. At one point during her last two years in college, a woman whom she had met earlier in school commissioned her to do a painting of sailboats in a sunset setting. Subsequently, the woman commissioned Paulette to paint a wall mural in her home. News began to travel quickly by word of mouth to friends and neighbors creating a steady demand for her talents. As demand for her art continued to grow, Paulette found that she was able to make substantial money but was also able to save on child day care expenses since she could keep her children with her while she worked. This allowed her to eventually step away from her work in bio chemistry. During this time of artistic growth, she recalled the magnificent art that she had seen while traveling throughout Europe in her younger years. While in school, Paulette had studied the work of the masters. She referred often to their works and studied their individual techniques as a way to improve her own skills as an artist. She began studying Rembrandt and later Renoir and others were to follow. But she wasn’t quite ready to set off as a full time professional artist just yet.

Minnesota Girl

Paulette as a teenager, loved riding the neighbors horses and at age 32 she decided to try her hand at raising horses as she continued doing commissioned paintings and murals. For 13 years, she owned and operated a ranch in Annandale MN a short distance outside of Minneapolis. She specialized in raising Tennessee Walkers which were known for their smooth gait and comfortable ride. She even raised a similar breed of ponies for children. During that same time she opened her first gallery in Buffalo MN where she displayed and sold the work of other artists. Although Paulette loved the horses, it was her art that was paying the majority of bills and so the decision to return full time to her art pulled her back to painting exclusively.

Paulette was extremely talented and her art sold quickly drawing her to another opportunity, that of teaching others how to paint. As it turned out, Paulette also had a natural talent for marketing. She would host events at her gallery to draw customers in and giving classes was one of those events. She discovered that her students had been taught that they would never be able to make a living at just painting. Only a few artists after all became famous, and that usually occurred after their death. Paulette knew this was utter hogwash and taught her students not only how to paint but how to make money doing it as well.

Here Come the Angels

In the year 2000, at age 59, Paulette had her 3rd near death experience. Let that sink in for a moment, you are 59 years old and you have experienced personal death 3 times… In all 3 experiences, Paulette had been greeted by her angel and loved ones that preceded her in death. Each time she was sent back to complete her mission but upon regaining consciousness, she couldn’t recall what that mission was. Three months later, after recovering from the last experience, she was visited again by her angel who explained that her mission was to paint guardian angels for terminally ill children.

The day after being visited by her angel, Paulette received a call from a woman asking her to paint a guardian Angel for her newborn child. As Paulette later learned, the woman’s husband was a psychiatrist at the Children’s Hospital. This afforded her the opportunity to connect with children on a much larger scale. In the many years that have followed, Paulette estimates she has painted more than 26 thousand paintings of angels.

After 4 years of honoring her mission to paint her angels for children, Paulette had burned through much of her life’s savings as her paintings were free to the families with which she worked. Once again her angel returned and explained that she needed to make the angel paintings available to everyone and not just the children. This worried Paulette because she feared that adults wouldn’t understand the angels and might view her as being different in a not so flattering way. Paulette had been painting continuously in the hospital common areas at this time, working with the children and their families. One of the blessings was that during that time in the hospital, she realized that the children had been the ones to teach her to accurately paint the angels because they could actually see them. It was also in that time that she began to realize another gift, one of being an empathic. When she painted, it was the angels themselves that guided her hand and created not only the image but a personalized message to the recipient. She learned that we each have our own angel with a unique appearance and identity just as we do as humans. This empathic gift also allowed her to see the various auras, both good and bad that people displayed. These auras can be seen by the naked eye and with a little practice and squinting, most people can train themselves to see them too.

After providing nearly 2000 free paintings to the children over the course of 4 years, the angels knew that Paulette was nearly broke. They intervened on her behalf causing a dear friend to gift her a sum of money to enable her to paint her angels for adults. She began by setting up booths at metaphysical shows that she traveled to across the country where she took orders for angel portraits. She also created a website that she still has to this day, www.angelsbypaulette.com. As things progressed her business grew through her online presence. She began to give lectures about talking to angels at the various shows she attended. Things were looking up for Paulette and her followers embraced and identified with her work.

Soon a call came in, this time from a woman selling advertising space in a periodical that specialized in angels. The cost of entry was a hefty $10,000. No stranger to following her instincts and casting caution to the wind, Paulette rolled the dice and placed her add. Within no time at all, she was deluged with requests and had to start stacking orders. The orders kept coming over the years and continued even following Paulette to Belize despite the ad being discontinued 2 years prior. As fate would have it in Belize, cell phone and internet service were extremely unstable making it extremely difficult to service her online clientele at that time.

Caye Caulker Here I Come

It’s now 2013 and at age 72, Paulette’s angel visits her again instructing her to go to Caye Caulker Belize. As luck, or lack thereof would have it, she was still recovering from a major fall from scaffolding while painting a large mural two and a half years earlier and had broken countless bones in the process. To this point, Paulette had planned to retire in France to be surrounded by the art world she loved so much. Despite her personal interests, she followed the angel’s instructions and went kicking and screaming to Caye Caulker as the angel had instructed her to do.

It bears mentioning now that at the time of her arrival on Caye Caulker, Paulette was also battling pneumonia and colon cancer. It was her expectation upon arrival that her trip was only one way and it would be a brief trip at that, but she was committed to her mission.

As is well known on the islands, there are countless sources of alternative medicines. In this case, fate intervened yet again and Paulette was introduced to a woman that provided her with herbs and local remedies for her ailments. Within 1 month, the pneumonia was gone and within 6 months, the cancer followed, both leaving her body for good.

Paulette knew after stepping off the ferry that Caye Caulker would be her new home. Obviously, the angels were right. From January of 2013 to November that year, Paulette began sewing and making local crafts as she continued to service the demand for her paintings from her online following. Soon, she found herself among locals and expats that appreciated her skills and contributions to the island. Over the years, Paulette had done only commissioned work. She had galleries of her own displaying the works of others and found countless ways to make money from her love of art. At one point, she painted a 4,500 square foot mural for a handsome price. The last thing she intended to do at this stage of her life however was to open another gallery on Caye Caulker.

Red Flower Gallery

While apartment hunting for a friend, Paulette was shown a building to rent that was less expensive than her present apartment and would allow for a small gallery as well as her personal living space. Considering the potential business possibilities, she signed the lease and moved in. Paulette has since gone on to open the Red Flower Gallery in the building she rented a block off the beach on Caye Caulker where she paints anything from landscapes to seascapes to portraits of children, pets and family vacations, although portraits are her specialty.

A close friend that accompanied Paulette to the island on her first visit was so overwhelmed by insect bites that she refused to return for another visit. Being a bio chemist, Paulette spent the next 8 months developing a bug repellant that would also serve as a sun block, stop the itching and heal the bites. On top of that, it was environmentally safe for the local reef and marine life. The product later became known as “It Works” and became the best natural bug repellant / sunscreen in Belize.

After living in Belize for more than 7 years, as you can see and hear from her story, Paulette has discovered that if you are open to really feeling, and hearing things around you, and are willing to give up “your” control, things will evolve in their own way and you will find yourself wanting for nothing. After living here for a while now, and adjusting to the ways of life on Caye Caulker, she has most of what she needs today to follow her passion as she chooses.

Beautiful People of Belize

When asked what Paulette likes most about her new home she responds instantly, she loves the Belizean people and their way of life. It’s easier to be true to yourself here. She loves the simplicity and freedom of expression felt in her new island home. She enjoys being a spokesperson for the Caye Caulker way of life whose motto is, “Go Slow” and advocates for the local business owners she has grown to know and now calls family. Paulette wants to support them both because they have both been so good to her. Part of her mission now is to preserve the beauty and innocence of Caye Caulker. Despite her calm demeanor, Paulette can become enraged with the destruction of the environment caused by tourism and development. She has no objection to visitors, she in fact loves to play host. All she asks is that you take only what you brought and leave the island as you found it to be enjoyed by future travelers. Only in this way will her and other residents be able to preserve the unique island lifestyle that they all cherish so dearly. Caye Caulker is the very last island of its kind in the Caribbean today with no cars and still sandy streets providing the only thoroughfares covering the island.

Today Paulette can be found in her gallery during the week and on Saturdays doing what she loves, talking to guests and visitors, selling her art and promoting the Caye Caulker way of life. Lunch is taken each day and consists of visiting with friends at local establishments within walking distance. The Red Flower Gallery is closed on Sundays as this is Paulette’s day to paint in her studio. When you visit, plan to stay for a bit. Paulette will reintroduce to you the art of easy conversation and visiting with friends. One visit can teach you some of life’s most valuable lessons.

The Many Faces of Belize - Part 2