As he lay critically wounded in a Vietnam rice paddy on Feb. 23, 1967, Jesse Treviño thought about his mother and his family back home in San Antonio.
His right arm shattered by the blast of a land mine and both his legs peppered with shrapnel,
Treviño recalls having a sense of resignation as an Army medic worked to save his life.
“I remember my whole past flashing before my eyes,” Treviño said in a recent interview.
A 1965 Fox Tech High School graduate, Treviño was a promising art student attending a prestigious New York art school on scholarship when he was drafted in 1966.
With his life ebbing away on that day 44 years ago, Treviño came to terms with his mortality while waiting to get evacuated to a field hospital.
“The corpsman came where I was and put a tourniquet on my (right) leg and gave me a shot of morphine,” Treviño said. “I was awake throughout the whole thing. I laid there for about 30 minutes before the helicopter got there.
“I guess that with the morphine and the whole situation of my painting hand feeling like it was on fire, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve done all these paintings. If I die, I got to go to New York and did as much as I could.’ It was like I was accepting death.”
A moment of clarity
But Treviño , then 20, fought back. Driven not only by his desire to return to his family but also by a desire to paint again, Treviño summoned the spirit that would make him an inspirational figure in San Antonio years later.
“I remember thinking of what I would be able to do if I lived,” Treviño said. “I thought I would be real picky about my subjects, about the things I would paint. There’s only a certain amount of time.
“I started thinking about what my priorities would be. I could picture a painting of my mother, the central figure of my family.”
Treviño lost his right arm and still carries shrapnel in both his legs, but he survived the horrors of war to become a nationally recognized artist whose paintings of his west-side roots and spectacular murals have linked him inextricably to San Antonio.
His body of work, which includes a nine-story “Spirit of Healing” mosaic mural that adorns Christus Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital downtown, has captured the essence of the city and its unique culture.
Considered one of the country’s foremost photorealist painters and muralists – two his paintings are on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. – Treviño is a testament to perseverance and the strength of the human spirit.
Treviño still lives in west San Antonio, above the studio where he works daily in a laid-back setting. His wife, Elizabeth Rodriguez, also an artist, works closely with him.
Battled depression during recovery
Although slowed by his war wounds – he sometimes has to use a walker – Treviño remains as driven as he was when he taught himself how to paint with his left hand.
Now 64, Treviño went through more than a year of painful physical therapy at Brooke Army Medical Center after returning to San Antonio.
“When I was at BAMC, I was so bitter,” Treviño said. “I was still at a point where I couldn’t understand. I thought, ‘Wait a minute, this is not supposed to happen to me.’ I was so shook up. I didn’t have my arm. I didn’t have anything anymore. I felt that way. I was so angry.”
But Treviño's life started to change for the better when he enrolled at San Antonio College in the fall of 1968.
“I couldn’t get away from the art department,” he said. “I still wasn’t sure what I could do. One day I started to draw with my left hand.”
Learning to paint with his left hand was both difficult and frustrating, but Treviño's passion for art always kept him pressing forward.
“I had to adapt,” he said. “I had to do things differently. And that’s what it was about. I’ve learned more things after I lost my hand than I learned before. The way I did it was learning that there are different ways to get something done.”
An education in art
Treviño was born Dec. 24, 1946, in Monterrey, Mexico. He was the ninth of 12 children born to Juan and Dolores Treviño, both deceased. His father was born in Sabinas, Mexico, and his mother is a New Braunfels native.
Treviño was 4 when his family moved to San Antonio. Two years later, he won an art contest at the Witte Museum and his life was never the same.
Treviño received a scholarship to study at Art Students League of New York, an independent art school, after graduating from Fox Tech. A classmate at Tech was Ricardo Romo, now president of UTSA.
“I knew I wanted to educate myself in art,” Treviño said. “It was the best way to become a professional artist.”
'Spirit of Healing' mural a San Antonio landmark
Treviño never had been on a plane before he booked a flight to New York to start a new life.
“I went to Greenwich Village,” he said. “I did portraits there. It was a great time. It was the time of the Beatles, the time of Bob Dylan, that whole explosion of music. It was fantastic.”
But all that came to an end when he got his draft notice. Although Treviño wasn’t a United States citizen, he said he felt a sense of duty to serve. Five of his older brothers had been in the military, but he would be the first in his family to serve in Vietnam.
“I went from being an artist to suddenly being in the Mekong Delta, out there looking for snipers,” Treviño said. “It was horrible.”
Treviño, who served with the 9th Army Division, was on patrol when he stepped on a booby trap that nearly killed him.
“That was such a turning point for me,” Treviño said. “If you ever saw a retrospective of my paintings before that, the last things I did my right hand, the difference is incredible,” he said. “The evolution of all these different paintings came because of that one thing. It shook me up. It woke me up.”
'When you give up, you die'
Treviño said he would consider the “Spirit of Healing” mural his signature piece of work. It took him three years to complete the project.
“That’s the one that stands out,” he said. “People who just drive through San Antonio can see it.”
Treviño has a bachelor’s degree from Our Lady of the Lake and a master’s in fine arts from UTSA.
His life should inspire young and old alike.
"I can't imagine ever giving up," Treviño said. "I guess when you give up, you die. To me, there is no other way. If it's hard, I'm going to find a way."
Jesse Treviño always has done that.
Photographer Veronica Zaragovia contributed to this report.
