Author Lawrence Bohme has been illustrating his own books and making pen-and-ink postcards for over 30 years, and on three different continents. His original drawings have been sold in book and card shops in New York, Paris and Rio de Janeiro, as well as published in his own travel books and memoirs. At last he has brought together over 100 postcards of the life and scenes of famous cities and little-known villages alike in a single volume, with a running narrative that tells about the subject of each drawing and how the artist's nomadic life led him to travel to it.
About the author…
Lawrence Bohme was born in 1942 in London, to an English mother and a German refugee father, emigrating to Vancouver, Canada, after the war. At age 14, Lawrence travelled to Mexico with his mother, who wanted to become a painter. It was in Mexico City that Lawrence learned to speak the first of his current five languages. The small family later lived in Jamaica, British West Indies, and in New York's Greenwich Village.
In 1960 Lawrence went on to study at the University of Madrid, where he acquired the second name of "Lorenzo", and later also at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1965, finding himself in San Francisco, he sailed to Rio on a freighter to fulfill his dream of living in a favela, staying in Brazil five years. Always with the writing of a book about his travels in mind, he spent two years in Haiti and three years in Colombia, living also on the islands of San Andres, Grand Cayman, Saint Martin and Saint Barths, where he worked as a leather craftsman and pen-and-ink postcard artist.
He returned to Europe in 1981, becoming a translator for Unesco in Paris and eventually finding his way back to southern Spain. There, he settled in the olive-farming town of Montefrio and wrote several "artistic and historical guide books" about his village Montefrio and also Granada, the city of the Alhambra Palace. He has been at work for the past ten years on his memoir, "Lorenzo, The Story of a Very Long Youth", and has thus far completed seven volumes "each one the length of a normal-sized novel", which are published separately on Amazon. He is now working on the last three volumes of the series, which reaches its cataclysmic end in Paris, in the year 1983.
A journalist recently asked Laurence why he calls his book the story of a "very long" youth. The author explained that his youth went on much longer than is considered normal, given that it wasn't until the age of forty-one that an "emotional earthquake" forced him to finally start "growing up". He added, with a trace of irony, that the title also expresses his gratitude to "a God I can't help believing in for granting me so many years to make an ass of myself".
For many years a leather craftsmen, Laurence began by doing drawings of Caribbean islands to sell in his workshop, and when they "took off" he put down knife and awl and set out to conquer the world with his pen. You can read “The Postcard Maker” as an art book reflecting the work of a self-taught “drawer” as Lawrence calls himself, or as the free-wheeling adventure story of a curious and restless man who couldn’t see enough of the world.
About the author…
Lawrence Bohme was born in 1942 in London, to an English mother and a German refugee father, emigrating to Vancouver, Canada, after the war. At age 14, Lawrence travelled to Mexico with his mother, who wanted to become a painter. It was in Mexico City that Lawrence learned to speak the first of his current five languages. The small family later lived in Jamaica, British West Indies, and in New York's Greenwich Village.
In 1960 Lawrence went on to study at the University of Madrid, where he acquired the second name of "Lorenzo", and later also at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1965, finding himself in San Francisco, he sailed to Rio on a freighter to fulfill his dream of living in a favela, staying in Brazil five years. Always with the writing of a book about his travels in mind, he spent two years in Haiti and three years in Colombia, living also on the islands of San Andres, Grand Cayman, Saint Martin and Saint Barths, where he worked as a leather craftsman and pen-and-ink postcard artist.
He returned to Europe in 1981, becoming a translator for Unesco in Paris and eventually finding his way back to southern Spain. There, he settled in the olive-farming town of Montefrio and wrote several "artistic and historical guide books" about his village Montefrio and also Granada, the city of the Alhambra Palace. He has been at work for the past ten years on his memoir, "Lorenzo, The Story of a Very Long Youth", and has thus far completed seven volumes "each one the length of a normal-sized novel", which are published separately on Amazon. He is now working on the last three volumes of the series, which reaches its cataclysmic end in Paris, in the year 1983.
A journalist recently asked Laurence why he calls his book the story of a "very long" youth. The author explained that his youth went on much longer than is considered normal, given that it wasn't until the age of forty-one that an "emotional earthquake" forced him to finally start "growing up". He added, with a trace of irony, that the title also expresses his gratitude to "a God I can't help believing in for granting me so many years to make an ass of myself".
For many years a leather craftsmen, Laurence began by doing drawings of Caribbean islands to sell in his workshop, and when they "took off" he put down knife and awl and set out to conquer the world with his pen. You can read “The Postcard Maker” as an art book reflecting the work of a self-taught “drawer” as Lawrence calls himself, or as the free-wheeling adventure story of a curious and restless man who couldn’t see enough of the world.
