Still life in Bohol

Pablo Tariman thinks I must've descended from the line of Francisco Dogohoy, he who waged the longest revolt in Philippine history. It comes from my attraction to the province of Bohol. I've visited neighboring Cebu just as many times, but there's nothing like the appeal of people and landscape of Bohol.

I've always envied poet Marjorie Evasco because she has this province to go home to again and again. On our last trip there with Rolly Fernandez in 2014, she brought us to the house restored by aesthete Ino Manalo.

Something clicked in my mind that I brought out my digicam and shot picture after picture. Everywhere I turned there was something worth preserving in digital memory.

The enhanced community quarantine permitted me time to go over these files. What was on my mind as I took them? Perhaps the wish that one day I'd show them to my painting tutor, Norman Chow, with the thought that he'd guide me through a series of works in acrylic on paper canvas. It was never to be. Norman died in 2018.

I don't know about the fate of Ino's house--if I can ever "go home" there again one day. Meantime, I'm left with these images.

Forever Norman

Norman Chow, my painting teacher for over 12 years, and I were supposed to "plot out" what would have been the 12th and last of 12 paintings for a two-person show I am scheduled to be part of in November. We began leisurely work as early as the first quarter of this year. We hated being hurried. But the 12th work isn't meant to be because just as Baguio was waking up from the debris left by super-typhoon Ompong, we who loved and respected Norman learned that he died Sept. 17. To say it was sudden is an understatement. I haven't totally come to terms with the loss. I will miss his quiet guidance, his humble ways (he was an excellent visual artist skilled in dry and wet media, able to paint in the traditional Oriental style and also come up with contemporary images) and his patience in imparting his technical knowledge. He helped me find my style and feel confident in it, not to be apologetic about a childlike view of the world and of shapes and colors. In honor of Norman, I am giving the title "Norman's Feast" to my show of still lifes of food painted in acrylic. The show, which will also feature the paper cutouts of Sinag de Leon, opens Nov. 7 at Waya Araos Wijangco's Gourmet Gypsy Art Cafe at 25 Roces Ave., Quezon City, and will run until the end of December. Waya comforted me, texting, "I'm sure he has given enough in the last 12 years for you to keep painting forever." In photo is Norman's rendition of what Green Valley in Baguio looked like before it was developed into the subdivision it is today.

Food glorious food

Once a week, my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis and I get together with our painting tutor Norman Chow to spend a whole day mucking around with our brushes and paints. Toottee and I paint different genres--another reason we get along famously. We can never consider each other rivals. I'm sorry I wasn't able to take photos of her works. But here are mine, done over the past three weeks. I've focused on the theme of food because it is always at the back and front of my mind--what to eat next after the current meal is consumed.

Or maybe because Toottee, a baker also by avocation, serves wonderful refreshments. Yesterday we had slices of moist banana bread brought by Norman's other occasional student, Angie del Rosario of Veniz Hotel, Toottee's oatmeal cookies and famed brownies with Sagada tea. Conversation is always warm and robust even if Toottee and I are beginning to feel our bodies betraying us. But for as long as we can hold a brush, we promise to soldier on.

"Cupcake Fiesta," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

"Brekkie," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

"Halo-halo Ka Rin," acrylic on canvas, 24" x 18"

New works

I've always called my paintings "paintings" or just plain "works," never "art." When I was a fine arts freshman at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman, our teacher Bob Feleo emphasized the use of the generic word "works" for the reason that it would be the public or another objective body that would baptize you with the title "artist."

Since 2004, I've followed Sir Bob's "command." I'm not doing art. I'm just painting my afternoons away every other week with my friend Toottee Chanco Pacis. Toottee is concentrating on making hand-painted, one-of-a-kind Christmas cards and postcards. I cannot paint on small paper. I need elbow space.

Here are my latest works done under the supervision of our tutor, Norman Chow. Forgive me if I fail to give the paintings' dimensions. Haven't gotten around to doing that. Just excited to share what came out of Toottee's greenhouse/studio. All used acrylic on canvas paper.

"Blue and White," mistakenly dated 2014 when it was actually done this year

"Broken China"

"Dream Catcher"

"Lily of the Field"

Dying to Tell You

"Dying to Tell You," acrylic on canvas paper, 12" x 18", 2016.

Dear Me,

I just want to assure you that dry periods in painting or any kind of creative work are the old normal so you shouldn't fret too much when the Muse or the Holy Spirit seems to be absent in your life.

You're back to painting your signature still lifes after a brief foray in including the handiwork of your grandchild in your paintings--her doodles, her cutouts, her you-name-it, she's the fearless art-maker in the family. She'll have her moment to shine again. Right now, she's too focused on raising and disciplining a puppy named after a Christmas spice, nutmeg.

Kai with Nutmeg the moxie (a mix of the breeds Maltese and dachshund)Photo by Kimi Fernandez

Some of your acrylic paints in tubes have hardened. Teacher Norman Chow advised that these should be massaged when they're not being constantly used. Who knows? In the course of massaging the paint tubes, inspiration will come.

That's why you should always give yourself a second and third chance before feeling that you've thoroughly lost It already, It to include the compulsion to write and blog about life's seemingly little events. For you do lead an event-ful life. The uninspired moments are just telling you to take a break, to mourn for what was lost, then to get over the sniffling and take up the brush, computer keyboard or pen.

"Foursome," acrylic on canvas paper, 12" x 18", 2016.

Always with you,
Babeth

'Collectibles' from Joy B

"I love writers who paint. To me, their works are collectibles."

Coming from Tony Perez, creative writer, playwright, poet, lyricist, painter, author of Tatlong Paglalakbay trilogy (Bombita, Biyaheng Timog and Sa North Diversion Road), Oktubre, Noong Tayo'y Nagmamahalan Pa, Noong Akala Mo'y Mahal Kita, among other titles, that's as good as a validation as any. He posted the comment after I shared a family photo showing Rolly, Kimi, Ida and myself in a rare moment together at the opening of my first solo show of paintings at Gallery Nine back in 2006 or "07.

By that time I was in the thick of Fine Arts studies and was taking art tutorials under Norman Chow at the same time. And painting was indeed a reason to live.

Recently, PR girl-art collector Joy Buensalido emailed me photos of works of mine in her collection. The thing with old works when you view them after a span of time and space is they never cease to amaze. I end up half chuckling while I tell and congratulate myself, "Did you really do that? You're not so bad, my friend!"

"Apples in Space," acrylic on canvas

"Landscape," acrylic on canvas From the collection of Joy Buensalido

Arlene Esperida and her ATC movement

Arlene Esperida is a Japan-based artist who I met at the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) conference in Manila in '03, if my memory is having a good day. Somewhere in our house in Baguio is a painting of hers, mainly in orange, with biomorphic forms.

Since then, we rediscovered one another when I still had a Facebook account. Then we embarked on this small project of helping democratize art through artist trading cards or ATCs. I started one with the Baguio Aquarelle Society in '09 or thereabouts (excuse the occasional lapse in factual or episodic memory; rest assured the associative or long memory is intact). For a time I was using these cards as my business cards, although more pragmatic friends would say, how come I have to make these one-of-a-kind cards, usually practice paintings in small sizes before I enlarge them, into business cards? In short, impractical, probably they're gauging the effort in terms of use of paint, images, etc.

Well, visual artists and writers make heroic choices every day, that's all I can say. Meanwhile, Arlene and I have corresponded by postal mail; so have Gladys Lyn "Nini" Teves Lapuz and I in the same fashion off and on for many years now.

Meanwhile, I've rid myself of the collecting bug but not yet in terms of ATCs. They're defined by this site http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Artist-Trading-Cards as having begun "in the tradition of business cards, but with a personal, artistic twist. Most ATCs are created on paper, but they may also be any other medium that can be worked in a suitable size. ATCs are traditionally the size of baseball cards and other trading cards. They're a fun way to exchange your own one-of-a-kind artistic flair with other artists you meet. You can also use them as business cards."

I am sharing part of my loot (a couple that my former classmate Potchie Lazaro swapped with my works ended up with Jessica Zafra--I knew she'd like his kapre and tikbalang). I encourage art students, or anyone interested in reviving "snail mail", to put more fun into something handmade. We all spend much too much time in front of our laptops and Netbooks (unwittingly, we expose ourselves to these machines' radiation, too). So here's to ATCs and how they've revived art in small sizes, penmanship, trips to the post office, among other heroic everyday choices.

The actual sizes of these ATCs are sometimes even smaller than the images below. Thank you, Arlene, Jenny Cariño, Norman Chow, Toottee Chanco-Pacis, Nini Lapuz, Sinag de Leon and other fellow swappers and pen pals.

 

Womanly, naturally

Two artists have been uppermost in my consciousness while working on this painting: Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Jerry Araos. 

The first I admire for the subjects that filled her canvases and watercolor paper for much of her career--women doing farm chores, selling chickens, getting together with friends for a relieving round of giggling, etc. Hard-core social realist painters may fault her for idealizing the back-breaking work that these women did, but she gave her kabaro a dignity they deserved.

Jerry I continue to admire for, among many qualities as a sculptor and gardener, his choice of women as subject of his wood torsos (only in his last show while still alive at the Crucible Gallery did he do a bakla series) and the way he planned his garden in Antipolo. There may have been a schematic drawing of his plans for the garden, but sometimes Jerry would just let himself be moved by his dreams and feelings--he just let things flow naturally until before he or the others knew it, he had envisioned and carried out a Bob Fosse pathway, a mandala with a seat of power, etc. 

So here's to both of you, Ma'am Anita and Jerry, a small tribute from a smaller painter who has kept you both in her mind's eye.

Thank you also to Norman Chow, the most patient art teacher and friend I know, for sorting out my sometimes incoherent thoughts when I get ready to paint. He said he gets me quickly precisely because he is a teacher. Love you, Teach!

For me the lotus is more than a flower. It is also symbolic of how a fragrant beauty like it can blossom out of stench and mud.

Adding the human figure, a bent woman, in the background

Putting the background of a restful blue

Adding the skin tones

Drying the acrylic on canvas work alongside the day's laundry (thanks, Kimi and Ate Mack)

Tic Tac Toe

A blank plank of wood served as surface for a big painting (I haven't gotten around to measuring it) I began in February and resumed work on in April to offer it as birthday present for Butones, my grand-daughter. I'm hoping it lasts long enough so she can form an opinion about it when she learns to speak in sentences.

As of now, the acrylic-on-wood painting, which I've called "Tic Tac Toe Hally Hally Hoe," is hung in our porch in Baguio City and gets all naturally lit up by the morning sun. It makes for a colorful background for family pictures as these photos of my sister Suzy and the little gels show.

I thank my painting tutor Norman Chow for getting the muddle all sorted out in my head when I explained my idea for the work (he said he could figure out my incoherence because that was his work as a teacher), my spouse Rolly Fernandez for letting me use this piece of retazo wood idling in his basement, my assistants in detailing, Bianca Susi and Maylene Viray, who spent Holy Week with us in Green Valley, Baguio, to be around for Butones's birthday bash. There was no unveiling of said work, except here on this blog.

Juan Jose Cuadra, who used to answer to the name Jolicco when he wrote art reviews in the past, sent these comments through the email account of his partner Chikki Gomez, a.k.a.Auggusta de Almeidda, upon seeing past photos of my visual works in this blog: "Your childhood's deep pure innocence shows in your mature work. Innocence is important in art. All great artists have the grace of innocence in their art. It is an angelic gift, and I find it in your paintings. Nourish it well."

Grandma Sue carries Butones, Bianca stands at attention.

K stands for Butones's real name, Kai, while numbers 4 and 11 are  her birth date.

A tribute to Butones isn't complete without an elephant or two hugging her.

The full piece taken around 8 a.m. on a Friday morning.

Posing in front of work with the wee ones, Butones and Bianca

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Detail: That button nose, or should it be tomato-shaped nose?

Another detail: There's a frog in my throat!

We're dog persons, but stray cats are constants in our porch, too.

As for socks, mismatched, paired, orphaned, they're strewn all over the nursery when Butones has full run of the room.

Bianca insisted on polka dots, and after painting three or so dozens of them, she decided to drop her brush and join the trip to Camp John Hay. Guess who was left to finish her spot?

Somewhere in the painting is a symbolic figure of Grumpa Rolly who looks delighted by the sweet sunshine in his life. Photos by Babeth Lolarga