A Pinoy Photorealist in America

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 painting of uncooked rice in a bilao (circular woven-bamboo tray). The grains of rice are not only the ones painted with unerring exactness, the alternating bamboo weave pattern of the bilao and the kangkong leaves, tomatos, and the long green chilis were too. Remarkable also is Cortez's portrayal of the fish with glistening scales and the grainy wood of the table (or is it the floor?).

Cortez's virtuoso ways with his brush is the result of long years of diligent practice starting from when he was still in preschool. Cortez learned how to draw before he learned how to write. Since their family was poor and couldn't afford to buy him toys, Cortez made do with just pencils and papers as his playthings. He remembers the doodles he did on the paperbags used by his dressmaker mother to put the finished dresses in, which the customers must have found cute because they praised him profusely for it.

When the time came to go to college, Cortez didn't enroll in a fine arts school. His mother didn't want him to because she perceived an art career to be impractical and unstable. So, Cortez, reluctantly, entered a maritime school in Manila from which he earned the degree Bachelor of Science in Marine Transportation.

But those years spent studying for a career he didn't like weren't wasted. Cortez used his free time to browse art books in bookstores in downtown Manila. He also visited not only the art galleries and museums on weekends, but also the studios of painters working in the Mabini and Ermita area. He learned a lot there by keenly observing the artists at work.

Having granted his mother's wish by graduating from maritime school, Cortez felt free to pursue his real passion, art. He began associating with artists who he assumed could teach him the rudiments of the craft, like Loreto Racuya for example. Cortez also began joining art exhibits. The middle of the year 2000 was a landmark year for Cortez, because he got invited then to participate in a group show at the Philippine Center in New York. The next year, Cortez landed a job in the US.

Cortez's painting themes and motifs have remained Filipino despite his having stayed in the US for several years now. His fascination for such may have perhaps become even stronger. Induced partly by nostalgia and partly by his desire to present to other people the culture and food he so loved and missed, Cortez never tires of painting the same subjects again and again, with the same obsessiveness with details and the same virtuosity he had reached a long time ago.