True-blue Son of Angono

 

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 probably convinced Andres's parents of the lucrative potential of an art career that's why they allowed their son to enroll in Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas where he majored in Painting. After college, Andres worked in Giftgate for six months. He was persuaded to quit his job there by an art collector who promised to purchase all the paintings he would subsequently produce. Although that art collector reneged on his promise, Andres didn't seek another regular job and instead pursued painting full time.

That was a smart move. It enabled Andres to produce a body of work that won for him recognition and patronage. His paintings of children at play so impressed the executives of Merial Philippines that they commissioned him to do a series of such works for their company's 2007 calendar. He also regularly contributed Christmas card designs for Hallmark's L.I.F.E. (Leukemic Indigents Fund Endowment) project. Another source of pride for Andres was the inclusion of his paintings in three coffeetable books on Philippine art. Andres had six solo shows under his belt and had joined several group art exhibits here and in the United States and Singapore.

The Angono master Botong Francisco had developed a style uniquely his own. He painted his human figures curvy and soft and often filled up the negative spaces in his works with stylized cloud or mist-like formations. Having spent all his years in the rustic surroundings of Angono, Francisco's body of works, except the historical "murals" commissioned him, were inevitably portrayals of the doings of Angono's rural folks.

Andres, being a true-blue son of Angono patterned his art closely after the style of Francisco, but not too close to be deemed indistinguishable from the works of the late master. For one thing, Andres did away with models or photo references. He draws his figures from memory. That's good because by doing so, he stamped on his figures the look easily identifiable as drawn by his hand. That signature look is nowhere more apparent than in the facial features of the children characters in his paintings who he portrayed as look- alikes. Andres also didn't adopt Francisco's mist-like device as background in his works, and in its stead painted horizontal bands segmented into triangles of different colors and sometimes rectangular forms overlapping each other. What remain of Francisco's influence are the themes of tender filial bond and childhood camaraderie that makes the kids' years of innocence such a mine of happy memories. Fathers and mothers cuddling their children, kids busy with their games, and rural maidens huddled together were recurring motifs of Andres's art. Everyone who would see his works would definitely feel the aura of affection and joy emanating from them and can't help but be reminded too of the carefree years of their own childhood.