Amalgam of Old and New

 

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 reaping art awards in high school. He continued his winning ways when he became a professional artist. Here are a few of his wins and near-wins: 2nd Prize, 1996 AAP Art Competition; 1st Prize, 1998 AAP Centennial Art Competition (NCR Edition); Grand Prize, 2001 DENR Sail Painting Competition in Boracay; Jurors's Choice Awardee twice in both the Philippine Art Awards and the AAP Art Competition; Finalist, Diwa ng Sining Competition; and five times Runner-up awardee in Gallery Genesis Kulay sa Tubig Watercolor Painting Competition.

Two painters might have influenced Sarmiento. One is Lino Severino, who, with his Vanishing Scene series, popularized paintings of vintage houses, and the other, the photorealist Nestor Leynes. Sarmiento was first noticed for his paintings of vintage houses a la Severino. But Sarmiento's iconography deviated somewhat from Severino's, because Sarmiento also included in his paintings foliage, colorful flowers, cats, pigeons and other pets, pedestrians, and calesas to avoid projecting the somber and deserted atmosphere of Severino's works. Aside from that, Sarmiento didn't limit himself to painting facades or exteriors of houses. He delved deeper, and portrayed the interiors with their furnishings to give us an idea on how comfortable genteel Filipinos lived during the pre-war era. Leynes's influence on Sarmiento, on the other hand, could be discerned in his hyperrealistic still lifes.

Sarmiento's recent works, which he exhibited in the First Visayan Art Fair, are the products of his experimentation with composition and technique. The works were some sort of summing up, an amalgam, of the motifs that have enthralled him through the years. Facades of vintage houses and churches, painted photo prints seemingly taped on the picture planes, and images of turn of the century Filipinos and Filipinas were strewn, though not haphazardly, or superimposed on abstract backgrounds. Sarmiento is preoccupied here in mixing things old and historical with the modern language of abstraction. These supposedly experimental pieces won't be experimental anymore because of the success they have achieved in the art fair. Seven paintings from this series were sold, attesting to Sarmiento's current status in the Philippine art scene as one of its most in demand practitioners.