KASINING ESSAYS by Arnaldo de Tondo

  Essay 64. FROM AUTODIDACT TO MASTER PAINTER By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  AMBROCIO MALLARI is an autodidact or self-taught painter. He is that in the sense that he never studied in a fine arts school. What Mallari knows about painting he learned when he worked as an apprentice in a shop in Manila that produced movie billboards or cartelons. His uncle Perfecto Mercado brought him there when he was still in his teens. That job was a huge opportunity for a boy who used to practice drawing by bringing pencil and paper whenever he drove their carabao to the pasture to graze. Knowing that the opportunity to study in college was beyond their means, Mallari took advantage of his time in the shop to absorb the secrets of the craft. In 1975, Mallari began painting easel-sized works on canvas. It didn't take long for him to master oil painting and he was able in time to sell his paintings in galleries in Pampanga and Manila and later on, even in Hawaii. Mallari was born in Concepcion, Ta...

  Essay 63. TRUE-BLUE SON OF ANGONO By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  The scenic Laguna de Bay is fringed almost all around by the lakeshore towns of Laguna and Rizal. Most prominent among those towns is Angono, the birthplace of the late great National Artist Carlos "Botong" Francisco. Acknowledged by many as the art capital of the Philippines, Angono boasts not only of having Botong Francisco as its native son, but also Lucio San Pedro, a National Artist for Music. Angono is also JOVITO ANDRES's native town. He was born there on December 14, 1966. His father was a farmer and fisherman. His interest in art was aroused even before grade school by the illustrations in the comics given them by his aunt (who was a comics distributor) which he religiously copied. The annual exhibits at the town plaza of famous painters like Jose Blanco, Nemiranda, Salvador Juban, Lito Balagtas, and Weng Unidad further boosted Andres's ambition to become a painter. The success of those painters ...

  Essay 62. CELEBRATING CELEBRATIONS By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."  With that quote, Picasso elevated naif, primitivist, and even "childlike" art, onto a status equal to that enjoyed by Cubism, Fauvism, and other modernist art styles. Pablo Picasso, the pioneer art deconstructivist, was already a master of academic realism when he was in his mid-teens. But at some point in his career, Picasso grew tired of imitating natural appearances and began distorting and deconstructing forms and figures so that his works began to resemble more and more paintings that can easily be done by a child. That's all for the good it seems, because Picasso's radical creative moves liberated painters from the tedious task of copying nature as is, and expanded the definition of artworks that are considered aesthetically pleasing and professionally-done. AMADOR BARQUILLA's paintings - with the ex...