Church Portraits and Then Some

 

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. Thus, Perez saw the need to travel all over the country in search of interesting churches to paint. What Perez sought to paint were not churches of recent vintage with their smooth concrete walls and pastel painted facades. He prefers Spanish-era churches with their gray crumbling mossy stone walls.

Perez's art evolved though. Perez abandoned his academism and his palette of somber earth colors, and presently employs the whole gamut of rainbow colors in his quasi-abstract expressionist quasi-cubist works. Perez still paints churches, but no longer in a realistic manner. Best example is his painting of Minalin Church where the small image of the church is set against a great expanse of sky painted in the cubist manner in pastelly shades of pink, green, and gold.

Perez seeming obsession with churches sprouted from his childhood days. He narrates that it was his grandmother who played a big role in his choice of theme. Perez describes his grandmother as being intensely devout who would always bring him to the Sta. Elena church in Hagonoy whenever she went there to hear mass or attend other church activities. It is no wonder therefore that one of Perez's earliest artwork was a drawing of that church. 

The devoutness of his grandmother must have rubbed off on him for Perez likes to paint to this day, aside from churches, images of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary amidst swirling splashes of color. But Perez's output isn't all about the sacred. He also painted still lifes, landscapes, and portraits. To silence his teasing colleagues who claimed that he was only capable of painting wholesome stuff, he invited Ara Mina, Rosanna Roces, and ten other showbiz celebrities to pose nude for him and showed the finished artworks in another sold out exhibition.

Perez's art journey looks smooth to me, because even though his parents Raymundo and Leonila initially opposed his wish to take up Fine Arts, they eventually relented and allowed him to enroll at the University of Santo Tomas, where he received his BFA degree major in Advertising. He even managed to further his studies in two art schools in New York. Perez's first job after graduating was in an advertising company. He later went on to work at the Ayala Museum where he was part of the group of painters who assembled its historical dioramas.

Perez had exhibited solo thirty times here in the Philippines and one time abroad. His column, "Philippine Sights and Wonders", which highlighted the country's churches and cultural treasures, appeared during the nineteen-eighties in the Manila Bulletin. This column spread Perez's renown, and earned him invitations to exhibit in places like Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Germany, Belgium, France, and the USA. With his many sojourns abroad and his series of sold out solo shows, Perez easily disproved the myth that an art career is a one way road to poverty.