Womanature

Essay 23. WOMANATURE

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

FRANKLIN CAÑA VALENCIA  is just one in a long line of painters who have shown time and again their fascination with nude women as painting subject. For his forthcoming show, Caña will unveil paintings that belong to his Womanature series. Caña's paintings of women are not mere copies of how a woman's body ought to appear in real life. His female forms are stylized, and are prime specimens of a distinct style of cubism which he developed on his own way back in his early youth. 

Caña revealed in several interviews that he hit upon this style when, as a child, he peered closely at marbles he held against the light, and saw at the center of the spheres the twisted metal strips that glow and glitter and formed patterns similar to those formed by the particles inside a kaleidoscope. These patterns inspired him to segmentize his figures into full and half-circles, crescents, and polyhedrons, with each translucent geometric shape overlaid over the one he previously painted.

Caña's paintings are not just exercises in the harmonious interplay of lines, colors, and shape. They are also narratives. They tell stories. They can in fact be categorized as surrealist, or to use more recent variants of that term, as fantastic realist​ or visionary art--- as aptly demonstrated by the simplest of the paintings he will exhibit, "Womanature @ 28". This painting, which depicts cyclamens inside a vase utilizes a device much favored by the surrealist Dali---the double image. The vase, as you can see, had metamorphosed into a woman's buttocks.

The other paintings are on the fantastic side as well---like "Womanature @ 23", where a naked woman emerges from inside a lily, and "Womanature @ 27", showing what's supposed to be a water nymph in slumber at the bottom of a koi pond. 

There is also that painting of a naked woman back to back with what is apparently a fairy ("Womanature @ 24). Large diaphanous moth wings, which they seemed to share, separate them. On these wings are imprinted colorless butterflies. Those butterflies may be the key to interpreting this work. They must be representations of butterflies long gone, who can no longer savor the nectars of flowers in full bloom which are interspersed all over the canvas surface.

"Womanature @ 22" and "Womanature @ 29" show close-ups of women---the first with downcast eyes examining a butterfly perched on her shoulder and who appear to be hiding behind large grass-like leaves, and the other with staring eyes and raised eyebrow who blends seamlessly with the natural setting. They are probably images of goddesses discreetly watching the actions of humans who intrude into their forest and other nature realms. 

"Womanature @ 26" is an extreme close-up of what can only be a sylvan goddess being kissed and caressed by the flowers and the birds flying free around her. Included here is that interesting detail of a bird cage, opened to let the birds out, which is surely Caña's way of expressing his disapproval of birds, or any animals for that matter, being kept captive.

Two paintings are explicitly antipodal, or should I say complementary, not only because of their dominant color schemes of fiery orange and cool blue respectively, but also because each are symbols of the death and rebirth of a forest. "Womanature @ 25", with the forest nymphs depicted as the iconic three graces, shows those nymphs singing their own dirge before the forest fire engulfs them. "Womanature @ 30", on the other hand, portrays a naked woman, most likely the goddess of the rocks and mountains, whose very barrenness, hinted at the destruction wrought upon them, again by humans. But a closer look would reveal a tiny plant that sprouted within a minute crack in the rock. The symbolism is obvious in these two paintings---death and rebirth, destruction and regeneration. 

The resilience of nature seems to be the principal theme of Caña's current body of works. This suite of paintings is not of naked human females per se. They are more like images of women as mother nature---or as goddesses and nymphs forever guarding our forests, mountains, and seas against the depredations of man. The overall note here is optimistic, as exemplified by that lone diminutive plant that sprouted without nurture inside its own diminutive nook.

(This essay is the exhibition notes I wrote for Franklin Caña Valencia"s 11th solo show at the Saturday Group Gallery last Sept 22, 2018)