‘Oh, My Señorita, Sweet Sweet Lady’: The Story Behind the Painting

Sometime in February this year, my youngest of four sisters, Gigi Lolarga (poker nut to me, Eugenia Celerina D. Lolarga in her birth certificate), asked me, her ate, what my birthday gift was for her. Normally, I’d pull something out of my thin wallet. But that day, all I could promise her was a portrait of Bruno Lolarga, her “son.”

The image of the playful pug Brunski stayed in my mind like an old refrain, so to speak. When friends like Brenda V. Fajardo, my former professor in modern art in the mid-1970s (gosh, this really dates me) fell seriously ill followed by Rey Rimando, math prof at UP Baguio and my children’s math tutor who made them less fearful of numbers (his aneurysm struck on Valentine week) and Noel Cuizon (a nephew of Brenda’s, by the way), there was no way my earnings as a freelance writer would contribute anything of significance to the cost of their operations, recuperation, follow-up with medical specialists, rehabilitation, etc.

By this time I was keeping mind, breaking heart and sometimes unsteady hands busy by painting in preparation for a solo show at Taumbayan bar-bistro.

I texted my exhibit proposal to Joel Saracho, former colleague from Manila Standard days and manager-partner of the bar, who was on a video shoot in Bukidnon, but he managed to reply, “That’s so Taumbayan,” meaning he approved of my contrasting blings with canned goods and instant noodles.

Summer of last year, he invited me to exhibit there when it was just a few months old. Since then, the place has been a night owl’s hub for the theater and television people who keep odd (a.k.a. vampire ) hours. I felt right at home that first time there with Gou de Jesus and Ernie Enriquez.

Someone was having a birthday then—Augie Rivera, if my blinking memory is working right. We were complete strangers to one another but were quickly introduced. Like any hospitable birthday celebrator, he asked me to partake of his feast. Un-shy when faced with a rectangular slab of Estrel’s caramel cake, I cut a generous slice complete with rosebud-shaped icing. Talk of feel at home. I always like to use William Saroyan’s title for his book “My Kind of Crazy, Wonderful People” in situations like this.

To shorten this narration, one day in March this year I posted a picture of Bruno on my Facebook profile and stated that I intended to paint a portrait of him paired with a snooty señorita. The images of him with a lady were up there, still vague. Actor Frances Makil Ignacio, Nitz to those who know her, volunteered in her comment to be the model. I asked permission if I could scour her photos posted in her profile to guide me.

I zeroed in on Frances in a black and white polka dotted dress, which turned out to be her costume for her role as Lucy Brown in “Threepenny Opera” by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Well, as Ka Universe (Gilda Cordero Fernando) likes to say, the universe has a way of stitching things together. Even Gou, freelance writer-editor by day, occasional jazz singer by night, gave the bright suggestion of singing our friends to health. An art auction with songs to up the bids--brilliant, Gou!

Meanwhile, I couldn’t think in my regular format of 16” x 20” anymore. This tribute to Bruno, his master Gigi, Frances, etc. had to be BIG to be worth anything if it were to be auctioned off to benefit the sick. So I thought big: four feet by four feet canvas on board. My private art teacher Norman Chow had to repeat the request to ensure he was reading his SMS right. Yes, I texted back, four feet by four feet and make it an order for two canvases.

“Stormy Norman,” our private nickname for him, had his carpenter in Baguio execute the specs up to the stretching and priming of canvases. With paint and brushes ready and the managing of minor assorted household crises in Baguio and Pasig not bothering me any longer, I applied myself the way my other teacher, Jerry Araos, told me how at the greenhouse of Oscar and Toottee Pacis in Happy Homes.

Norman guided me all the way, recruiting his son Chino, a computer science major who paints on the side, to help. Chino was a study in coolness while Norman and I mismatched colors, hues and tints, he scratching his bald head, me scratching what was left of my head of hair. On learning that Chino was the third pair of hands in the endeavor, Toottee, who was then in Manila attending a valedictorian grandchild’s graduation, texted: “I hope Chino knows what he’s in for.”

We will see what we’re all in for when “Oh, My Señorita, Sweet Sweet Lady” goes up for auction at an opening bid of P8,000 early this evening, April 9, at Taumbayan, 40 T. Gener and K-1 streets, Kamuning, Quezon City.

Belated happy birthday, baby sis Gi. Sorry the painting of Bruno will find a new owner. Just the same, the real deal will always be with us.

Photo of re-tooled, revised "Oh, My Señorita, Sweet Sweet Lady" by LIWA ARAOS, exhibit curator

Bling Blings & Lucky Me

Soon to be seen at Taumbayan Bar-Bistro are a baker's dozen of paintings. Following is my statement on the show"Bling Blings & Lucky Me." Exhibition runs from April 9 to May 8. Regular Taumbayan hours are from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. The place is at 40 T. Gener and K-1 streets, Kamuning, Quezon City.

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“Bling Blings & Lucky Me”

Using her preferred medium of acrylic on canvas or paper canvas, Babeth Lolarga explores in her third solo exhibition of paintings the subject of the Pinoy’s obsession with brand names and accessorizing. She contrasts this against the majority’s diet of rice and fish and, in the absence of the first two items, instant noodles.

Mixing colors to approach oil’s qualities of opacity and luminescence, she lays on her statements thick and fast—thick because acrylic can have a texture that is tempting to touch and fast because it is a quick-dry medium suitable to a temperament that demands immediate results at the end of each working day.

The manipulated lack of a clear figure-ground relationship and the use of rudimentary, child-like colors project the subject’s image into a shrill visual scream.

The scream grows louder as she moves from her canvasette to two large-scale works.

In “Chief to Chief,” her last, long drawn-out scream in this show, she uses her life partner’s photographic image taken beside a figure of an Indian chief. In Baguio, he heads a newspaper’s Northern Luzon bureau, a role that is relevant.

The seemingly irrelevant red Indian leader has bearing in the woodcarving village of Asin, Benguet, which is also in his area of responsibility. There the carvers produce images of Indian chiefs mainly for export to craft stores in the United States located near Indian reservations. Said carvings are passed off as products of indigenous Americans. And so it goes for kangaroos passed off as made by Maoris in Australia, lions in Africa, laughing Buddhas in Taiwan, etc.

Although the painter’s choice of subjects may be a feeble, almost lonesome way of shaking a fist at the world, “Bling Blings & Lucky Me” has given her another way of improvisational ranting and emotional release.


April 2010
Quezon City

Photo shows "Chief to Chief," an acrylic painting on canvas board measuring 4 feet x 4 feet, a collaborative work of Babeth Lolarga and Chino Severo Chow, 2010. Photo by LIWA ARAOS