KASINING ESSAYS by Arnaldo de Tondo

  Essay 61. CHURCH PORTRAITS AND THEN SOME By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  I first became aware of AL PEREZ in the early 1970s, when his paintings of churches were featured, if my memory serves me right, in a magazine. That feature was probably a review of his first solo art exhibit at Galerie Bleue. It was a most auspicious beginning for the 25 year old Perez, because not only was his show graced by the heavyweights of the Philippine art scene, all the  paintings on show were also snapped up by art collectors, including the then first lady Imelda Marcos  Dubbed as the portrait artist of Philippine churches, Perez never tires of painting churches, although the formal qualities of the churches he paints today are a far cry from those that he painted in the past. Perez's early church paintings were academic, mere retinal transcriptions (as the art critic Leonidas Benesa would put it) of the subject matter before him. Even so, it proved to be what the art collectors wanted....

    Essay 60. ART JOURNEY OF THE MANGYAN ARTIST By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  Let me borrow a term that pertains to folklore or mythic narratives from long ago: Ethnic Genre. I supposed ethnic genre could also be used to categorize the subject matter of painters who like to portray or narrate in paint not only the visual attributes of members of ethnic tribes, but also their doings or way of life. Ethnic genre is different from ethnic art, which is but the aggregate of art objects the tribal natives create themselves. MATT RELOX specializes in ethnic genre. He was born in Mindoro - in Bansud, Oriental Mindoro specifically - a Philippine island whose indigenous inhabitants are the Mangyans. Relox is not of Mangyan ancestry himself, but living in relatively close proximity with these people whose way of life and peculiar clothing are very much different from those of the lowland inhabitants, Relox couldn't help but be inspired to document his impression of them in paint and o...