The Renaissance Man

 

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 into art, that's why he can safely say that no one among them had truly inspired him to be an artist. Rudinas artistic bent manifested itself fully when he was in elementary school. He increased and honed, years later, his knowledge and skill in painting by joining art groups, perusing art books, and clipping features about art from magazines and newspapers.

Rudinas took up BS Accountancy in college. He worked in a bank after he graduated, where he rose to become a manager of a Metrobank branch. He resigned in 2018, which gave him the opportunity to paint full time. He went back to banking when the pandemic struck, and is currently head of a BDO Network Bank.

It was in the year 2000 that Rudinas arrived at his very own cubist style after seeing and absorbing the underlying principles and techniques of the works of Vicente Manansala and Celso Pepito, who Rudinas said are his favorite artists. The difference between the cubism of Rudinas (which he termed "Ronnism") and that of Manansala might be subtle, but it can be discovered if one looks closely. In Rudinas' works, the angularism of the background patterns is reduced, or even nil, especially in his series of paintings depicting leaves all over. Not for him are the jagged planes and the plethora of straight lines that the old master seems to be fond of. His painting "Purple Harvest" exemplify this best. The woman in the picture cuddling a trayful of mangosteens is no longer delineated with straight lines, but rather, with graceful lines and curves. The background too is rich with undulating planes.

Love, affection, and tenderness are the emotions evoked by many of Rudinas' works: love between sweethearts, between parents and children, and even love as being imagined by the girl in the painting "Sweet Guitar'. Love is demonstrated instinctively by the inclined heads of the cuddling persons indicating their desire to be as close as possible to the object of their affections. Even the green painting of what look like leaves has an element that Rudinas meant to be a symbol of love - the purple colored "puso ng saging" (literally, heart of the banana).

These green paintings that I kept mentioning are truly worth noting because they signal a shift or departure from Rudinas' previous overt cubist style. They can't be classified yet as non-objective abstracts because of the puso ng saging and the human figures faintly discernible among the leaves. If Rudinas pursue this style further, this could be his brand, his signature style, because this is Ronnism at its best.