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1062021-2022 selected works

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2019-2020 selected works

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2017-2018 selected works

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 2015-2016 selected works

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2011-2014 selected works

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No Combat without a Tumult. The Drawing Room. 2021

Waiting to Live, Waiting to Die, The Drawing Room. 2020

Outsider, The Drawing Room. 2019

Religion, VETRO. 2018

Death in the Open, 1335MABINI. 2016

Creatures of Circumstance, 1335MABINI. 2014

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I'm a studio artist interested in exploring structures in painting.I experience the act of painting as problem-solving - continuous composing and stepping back. My work seems to reflect my attitude towards human behavior, literature, belief systems.  Painting is a tool for and a product of image-making and it is also controlled energy and a state of mind. I am lucky to be able to work with it in representing what gives me a sense of awe and unease towards living.

CV

I have recently been asked by the team of The Drawing Room in my show "Waiting to live, waiting to die" about the titles of the works. Here are the descriptions I came up with:

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” is a work that started with a specific idea- how to capture an atmosphere of instability brought by the pandemic, an observation of how people react to the nearness of danger, of death. I placed some figures in close proximity to each other, inspired by the distances of people in a traditional wake, where people talk and console each other, look over, and think about the dead in the room. I presented a composition that is relaxed, and looked to see if a quiet collection of creatures will work. I wanted a sense of stillness that is unsure, something where one feels spite and laugh at it (this is because I myself have not come to terms with how to situate myself in the ongoing crisis), and maybe that explains why I chose the monochrome wash of red. The phrase came from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

“Get up at once” is an experiment on how I sense color recently. Since my main concern in painting is to discover new forms, I often get to a dangerous path of having a big canvas and not planning where or how to put elements/marks. This becomes a drill to me, an exercise on the eyes- the bigger the space, the bigger the problem. The title came from one of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories about a solitary painter - “get up at once” were the words written on a space on the wall near his bed so it is the first thing he sees in the morning. I was inspired by the discipline, because I struggle with having a schedule, and did that once when I was living alone. The main form ended to look like a landscape to me and I accepted it because it felt optimistic - to see some upward brush strokes as trees and some small marks as birds. That was the point when I sensed the title would be appropriate, because to me I find it less difficult to move about and work if you know there is something out there to report to, and imagine that they are trees.

The work “Fragile species” is inspired by Lewis Thomas’ collection of essays in his book The Fragile Species. One can always learn from scientists where we stand in the universe, and that includes the importance of knowing that we are just a very small and young group of species,and that we are only starting to learn about how we function. It made me happy to know that, and I felt an urge to draw some sense of interconnectedness, among us humans, perhaps an attempt to translate symbolically, using charcoal lines where no specific line really stands out. The lines give out some sort of shape, but not a shape that really makes sense from an objective-reality point of view. The painting started as a random experiment on form, but developed into a bright yellow flash that is not really all that bright. I found it funny in the beginning, but thought that Thomas’ essays gave it some kind of weight for me.

“You can only do it by education” is my statement on racism, specifically on the George Floyd murder. My knowledge on the history of racism is small, and I can only deal with my reaction to such issues through a small lens which is mainly visual. I presented a simplified form of a man with thin legs proudly standing on the neck of another on the ground and placed the words “I am a man” on canvas (used during the 1960s US civil rights movement). It was the best I could do, to put the phrase twice lest people forget, and put a title to it, to be able to share what I think about it even if I know it doesn’t really matter what I think. Showing paintings is my day job, and it is one of the least significant things anybody can do to join in the conversation. “You can only do it by education” is a phrase from one of Ayn Rand’s interviews, where she talks about improving the self, and being accountable for one’s actions.

“Fear and trembling” was made in a state of heightened energy, probably brought by frustration at how slow I progress in my work. I initially titled it Fire but I thought it did not capture the mood. I have always had a lingering feeling of silent anger, when I was younger it was because I thought that humans are the vilest creatures that ever lived, but as years pass I learned that maybe biology has a lot to do with how we conduct our lives. Now that that anger is aimed at nothing in particular, I learn that we are all alone, but that should not stop us from not giving up on life. I’ve always liked that bible verse that says “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” even if I am not religious - the words seem to come out poetically sound. I am borrowing only the words as I think it fits the form of the work, and have no intention of appropriating the religious context of the phrase.

“Walking on water” came rather easily, as the work itself flowed fast and successful after several minutes. That process seldom happens anymore because I always over-analyze the form, and that is why I named it after a title of a novel of a gifted poet that I once shared correspondence with. At the time he has not shared the work and hence I have not yet read it. His poems are in the ranks of our literary giants, and I am guessing his novel is as masterful.

“In hiding” is how I describe my way of life in the past year. I arranged to live on terms that include an ingredient of solitude and detachment. It was an experiment that enabled me to design my environment in the way that I like. Saved up some money for a small living space and waited to see if there is something worth looking into during and after the experience. I learned that it had similarities with a person in hiding, and that even if it is delicious to live on your own, the limitations are there to nudge you in several other directions, so the dark wall will recede and make way for a new understanding.

“Among the quiet folks” is my homage to John Moore, the mid-20th century British author that writes about life in the countryside. The phrase was used by a character (a father talking to his daughter) to mean “spending time with the dead” - as the character’s job was to do maintenance at the cemetery grounds. I thought it was a beautiful phrase, and very appropriate to my plan of creating a picture of deadness - as this work was supposed to be a representation of how helpless the dead and the living are in today’s crisis. The forms float quite irrationally at the bottom, similar to coffins being laid down carelessly under the earth.

“Burial” is a simple representation of the act of sending the dead out into the other life, as inspired by our Filipino tradition of ushering a beloved dead to a good afterlife through rituals. The one main form of the painting is inspired by the Manunggul jar.

“Killing fields” is a personal testament on the brutality of war. I may or may have not been aware of the desire to do a landscape work inspired by Chinese painting while creating the piece, but I noticed that in the middle of composing I deliberately created a form in the manner that resembles a calligraphic handling of paint on the final layer.

“Death in the open” is a reference to the idea that animals do not die in the open. It came from one of Lewis Thomas’ essays, stating that birds, mammals and other animals hide themselves when they know they are going to die. This was new to me the first time I read it, and I thought it necessary for me to make a work for my own consumption- I like observing how people react to the absurdity of the conditions of dying in today’s pandemic. We look at these happenings through the media, but we cannot really do anything about it - like having a dead body placed right in front of you. So I made the composition uncomfortable - placing a simplified image of a dead bird in the middle to occupy the larger space of this small canvas, and the painted white area representing an obscene quiet space above ground.