KASINING ESSAYS by Arnaldo de Tondo

  Essay 43. A WOMAN OF VISION By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol IPEK DENIZLI derives her iconography from various wellsprings of inspiration - mostly from styles that emerged during the postmodernist period. Gestural abstraction and Graffiti art are the styles Ipek's paintings have marked kinship with. While she admires Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo who are both figurative painters, Ipek chose to create works entirely distinct from theirs. I mentioned the word 'postmodernist'. What exactly is Postmodernism? Postmodernism is an eclectic movement that embraces not only painting, but also literature, film, photography, and performance, video, conceptual, and installation art. Also categorized as postmodernist are the successive art styles that sprouted after the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. Pop Art, which was a reaction against Abstract Expressionism's negation of recognizable image is postmodern. And so are Neo-expressionism, Graffiti, and feminist art. Unlike other scho...

  Essay 42. THE GOLD STANDARD IN ART By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol Gold occupies the highest niche among metals Even though I was told many years ago that it was dislodged by platinum from the highest pedestal, gold remains to be the standard of excellence in everything. A distinct characteristic of paintings during the Byzantine and Renaissance periods was the frequent use by artists of gold leaf in their artworks. That practice was carried over into the twentieth century by the Austrian master Gustav Klimt. Among Filipino painters, Raul Isidro and MYK VELASCO are the only ones I know who use gold leaf as pigment. There may be others but I don't know of them at this point (Gold leaf, by the way, is made of real or imitation gold and is available today in flakes, thin sheets, and in liquid form, the first two of which are glued on to the painting surface and the last applied by brush.) Michael N. Velasco was born on June 17, 1980 in Quezon City. Velasco's father is a business...

  Essay 41. MASTER ALLEGORIST OF OUR TIME By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol Wanderlust consumes ZHANG KEXIN. While most artists would feel contented to stay put on the spot where their studios are, Kexin always seeks new places, new faces, and new experiences. Kexin was born in Harbin, China in 1957. He completed his art education in 1982 at the Normal University of Harbin. From 1984 to 1989, he immersed himself in creative activities and joined several local art exhibits. After 1989 though, Kexin felt dried up, his source of creative inspiration depleted. What he longed to do to ignite his creative fire was to travel abroad, to become a nomadic artist. In 1992, Kexin and two other artists were invited by the Ministry of Culture of the Soviet Union to visit Moscow to give lectures and hold an art exhibit there. It was while they were on their way aboard the Trans-Siberian Express that news of the break-up of the Soviet Union was announced. That news stunned Kexin and his two colleagues, a...

  Essay 40. ART AS MEDITATION DEVICE By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol There are several strains of abstraction here in the Philippines. I will cite though only those I consider as the five clear-cut strains together with their most noted practitioners. First on the list are the gestural abstracts of Jose Joya; second, the geometric abstracts of Arturo Luz; third, the color field abstracts of Nestor Vinluan; fourth; the minimalist abstracts of Lao Lian Ben; and fifth, the abstracts depicting organic forms of Hernando Ocampo. RICO LASCANO's artworks are abstractions yes, but they don't seem to belong to any of the abstract styles I mentioned. His works resemble figurative Chinese watercolor paintings transformed into non-objective abstracts. Although painted in opaque acrylic with touches of graphite here and there, Lascano's paintings project instead the fluidity and charming delicacy of pure  aquarelle. Rico H. Lascano received his Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts major in Visu...

  Essay 39. THE RENAISSANCE MAN By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol L' uomo universale, universal man, Renaissance man - they all mean the same thing - a man knowledgeable or skilled in many fields. He is equivalent to what we describe today as a well-rounded man. I may be exaggerating a bit, but that's how I see RONALD 'RONNIE' RUDINAS. Why?, you ask. Well, firstly: he is an artist twice over. He not only paints, he also sings. Rudinas has a great singing voice. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Male Choir and Coro di Sant' Agostino. An admirer once described his voice as a "gift that can invite a crowd to draw near". Secondly, Rudinas finished accountancy in college, which is an indication that he also excels in Mathematics, a subject which many artists shun or have an aversion to. Rudinas was born in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte, on September 16, 1974. His parents are Lamberto sr. and Mercedes Rudinas. He said that no one among his immediate relatives were ...

  Essay 38. CELEBRATION OF FAMILY By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol I can believe Avic Zamora when she described herself as a 'little vandal' creating her own little masterpieces on the walls of their house. That's because all children with innate artistic talent truly are like that. No surface is safe from them if they run out of paper to draw their artworks on. Maria Victoria Lazana Zamora was born in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan. Her father, Dominador P. Zamora is a native of Bulacan, while her mother, Carmelita, was from Manila. Avic's father studied Mechanical Engineering. Unlike Avic, her father was drawn more into poetry. Avic said her father is a "natural-born poet, with great talent in writing poetry". Avic took up Fine Arts major in Advertising Design at the College of the Holy Spirit. After graduation, Avic worked as a Designer/Merchandiser for a clothing line that manufactures high-end apparels. She no longer works for that company. Avic is now into pa...

  October 5, 1987 Essay 37. SYMBOLISM AT ITS FINEST By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol Goddesses, nymphs, and other nature deities are recurrent motifs in art. Venus, Diana, Athena, and an assortment of nymphs and fairies have been painted countless times by European artists. WENCYL BUENAFE MALLARI, an upcoming Filipina artist from Tarlac chose nature goddesses too as the primary motif of her art. Wencyl was born on October 5, 1987. She grew up in a home where art is loved and encouraged. The fourth child of Corazon Buenafe and Ambrosio Mallari, Wencyl was tutored since childhood by his father who is also an artist. Wencyl began drawing when she was nine years old. When she finished high school, she spent a year studying painting. She learned then and mastered the use of oil and other painting mediums. In 2004, DTI-Central Luzon sponsored an exhibition of Wencyl's and her father's paintings in Intramuros, Manila. That same year, she was invited to be the guest in a local tv show, The F...

  Essay 36. AMALGAM OF OLD AND NEW By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol FIDEL MALIG SARMIENTO started out to be an architect. He first enrolled at the Mapua Institute of technology to take up Architecture, but quit after a year. Sarmiento must have felt that Architecture isn't for him because of his aversion to technical drawing. He is a fine artist who finds free hand drawing more fun. So, he switched course and enrolled in Fine Arts major in Painting at Feati University. Sarmiento was born on December 19, 1959 in Sampaloc, Manila. His parents are Ardalion Manite Sarmiento and Priscilla Bautista Malig. Sarmiento's parents were lucky. They never worried about the expense of sending him to college because he was a university scholar. Sarmiento made a good career choice because his profession as an artist propelled him, not only to prominence as a painter, but also to serving as President for three consecutive  terms of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP). Sarmiento began rea...

Essay 35. A PINOY PHOTOREALIST IN AMERICA By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol Lucban, in Quezon province, is the hometown of ROMEO "RONALD" CORTEZ and the late renowned painter Oscar Zalameda. Their connection ends there, because even if they are both Lucbanons, their brands of art are poles apart. While Zalameda's art traced it's lineage back to Vicente Manansala's school of cubism, Cortez's on the other hand showed marked similarities with the works of the Manileño photorealist Nestor Leynes. But Cortez's paintings differ markedly from those of the classical realists in his treatment of details. While the latter would just execute a few flicks of the brush to delineate an object, Cortez went beyond that and would painstakingly try to capture, using a small brush, every minute detail of the subject before him, to the point that they almost seem like photographs. This obsession to replicate forms with photographic accuracy is nowhere more evident than in his painti...