Toot Wah and Paola paint together

We must have been sisters in some past reincarnation, if you believe in such things. We're both the eldest of eight siblings. We're married to men who I can only describe as the Steady Eddie types: reliable, there when we need them, supportive but can be grouches when we cross the line.

We studied painting at just about the same time, she being more constant at it in between her higher theological studies. Well, I'm trying to focus on being a good person so we have that commonality, too. She and I also have an acute sense of when each is stressed out and needs to paint to relax.

That was how we found ourselves painting together in the middle of the week, sharing one long table with our own sets of paints and brushes. Her subject was a mini-garden within a bigger garden, particularly the one that the Panagbenga Festival initiator Damy Bangaoet designed and developed gratis for the Baguio General Hospital. My work was more like an exercise in feeling my way out of something with an earnest hope that I may finally sign the work when I sense that it is finished.

Our respective "messes" all laid out

Call me crazy but when I examined this photo I took of Toottee with her back turned and with her help looking for something under the kitchen sink, I was somehow reminded of certain interior scenes that the Dutch painter Vermeer did in the 1600s.

I texted, "Is it painting day today? Just making sure. Thanks. (signed) Paola Picassa."

Forthwith she texted back: "Yes, need a break, too. (signed) Toot Wah Renoir."

Toottee wanted badly to finish a painting that she had set aside. She was impelled partly out of guilt. She wanted to give it to Damy as a token of appreciation for the improvement he did on BGH's grounds. But she never got around to finishing it until she heard news of his passing in the States. She said the lesson here was to finish something that one wants to give to someone while there's time. Don't put off for tomorrow, etc., etc. At the end of the afternoon, her work was done, mine wasn't. She'll give hers to Damy's widow Bing.

Sorry again, I ain't done yet. My old critic-in-residence Rolly Fernandez thinks many finishing touches are needed. I know he's right, but due to my return to working-girl mode, I'm playing deaf. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Living together, working together

"Every artist dips their brush in their own soul and paints their own nature in their pictures." - Henry Ward Beecher

I share the same birthday as the American clergyman and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher, but that's just a coincidence. I fully agree with him though on how painting can be a kind of soul work. Maybe it's why I stayed away from it for close to two years, not that I didn't tend to my soul during that period. I'd hold my brushes now and then or check on my paints, especially the acrylics, to ensure that they had not yet hardened. Meanwhile, my brother who lives in Canada gifted me with bottles of metallic paints on his last visit here last year. Those things cost an arm and a leg in the local art supplies stores.

Fourteen days ago, I began a work while I was at my Mom's in the lowlands. Restless soul that I am, I was at wit's end when the Wifi went on the blink. I used up the time to begin painting again.

I decided to bring up all my art materials to Baguio after the last day of classes in the little school where I teach. I thought I'd find the time, finally, after all the excuses I've given myself on why that visually expressive side of me remained "asleep". Too many papers to edit, too many projects to get off the ground, too many books to read apart from writing deadlines. Ho hum. Indeed.

Early today, I saw my grandchild, who just turned four two days ago, working with her colors on her own little sketchpad. She was a picture of concentration. After she finished one sheet, she colored another. And there was this enviable casual expression on her face.

That did it. I brought out my unfinished painting and worked from after lunch until the light started to fade. I didn't stop until I was satisfied. Meanwhile The Wee One joined in, trying her hand with my acrylics while I reminded her to use up her washable colors first before she tried my preferred media. I must say she was pretty obedient. She'd even give me suggestions, e.g., "Wouldn't it be nice if you also put faces on your flowers the way you put a face on the sun?" Had I listened to her, it would mean I'm such a pushover!

Thanks, Kai, let's do it again sometime.

Filling in the blanks and somehow getting somewhere

Kai brings out her own painting stuff, stubbornly refusing to look up to my camera as she does her own thing.

Wielding a grownup's brush. Beats me in terms of self-confidence.

Rolly, our critic-in-residence (a.k.a. heckler) with his usual prop, a bottle of San Mig Lite

My last touch: a thin, watery coating of deep gold paint. And now to think of an apt title.

Photos by Booboo Babeth