WORKS ON PAPER

By Arnel Mirasol

Old Rex Bookstore, 1999, acrylic on paper, Rex Printing collection

Celebrated painter Renato Habulan, invited me to join him and other celebrity artists, Fred Liongoren, Benjie Torrado-Cabrera, and Pinggot Zuleta, in an exhibit of paintings on paper. The show, Papelismo, opened at the Crucible Gallery on September 4, 2012 (below).

It was late 2011 when Ato texted me about his plan to curate such a show, because he noticed that works on paper are being ignored nowadays by artists and art collectors alike. Well, there may be truth to what he said, because Atty. Jing David, owner of Galerie Anna, had also observed the same thing. We were at the Altro Mondo, during the opening of an exhibit of our group of Metrobank painting competition winners, when he told me that galleries find it difficult to increase the price of paintings on paper. There seems to be a certain ceiling beyond which the prices of paintings on paper cannot go. Sari Ortiga, President of the Crucible Gallery, also suggested a similar idea, when he advised me to focus on doing oils on canvas, because they are easier to sell. And he was right there, because the three oils I exhibited in my solo show at the Crucible in 2007, were bought wholesale by a single collector - at a good price. I surmised that one reason why collectors seem to be reluctant to buy paintings on paper is the perceived "perishability" of such works. Pish posh!- I say to that.

A Gift of War, 1983, mixed-media on paper, my collection

The painting at right, A Gift of War,  is one of my oldest extant works. It is a 1983 acrylic on Ingres-Fabriano paper. Compared to my old oils done during the same period, this painting aged admirably well. While my old oil paintings have lost their luster because of the accumulated dust and grime, this painting's colors have surprisingly retained their original intensity. And the paper, which is of archival quality, is still very far from crumbling.

The Emperor's New Clothes, 2000, acrylic on paper, May C. Reyes collection

The Sea Gypsy, 2002, acrylic on paper. Bert and Dulce Falsis collection

Submarine Buffet, 2008, acrylic on paper, Vince Tabirara collection

Mermen on Parade, 2008, Acrylic on paper,  Dr. Manolet Delfin collection

In my illustrations (above), I have mostly used acrylic on Canson Montval paper. Sometimes, when I finished a work, the paper buckled or warped because of the many acrylic washes I applied to it. This may surprised you, but what I did to straighten the paper out was immersed it for a second or two in a tub of water, and then hang it on a line to dry. Once dried, the paper regained its flatness with the colors remaining undisturbed and intact. However, I wouldn't recommend that process to watercolorists, because I'm sure that watercolor paintings, even if treated with fixatif would surely be erased if soaked in water. And oil paintings too should be kept away from water because water tends not only to weaken the bond between pigment and the canvas surface, it also makes the dried paint brittle which would result in its cracking and flaking off. One way of protecting paintings on paper is to always keep them framed under glass, or wrapped in plastic, which I should say isn't an inconvenient or expensive thing to do, compared again to what should be done to prevent an oil painting from collecting dust and grime - which is to display them in a dust-free or air-conditioned room.

By the way, A Gift of War, which was my plate for our Composition class at the UE School of  Fine Arts, was one of the two paintings I submitted to the City Gallery in 1985 for approval. Our group, the SETA Movement, intended then to hold our first show at that gallery. We asked Jun Rocha, a fellow UESFA student and one of the gallery's resident artists, to intercede for us. But he, to our disappointment, returned with the word that our exhibit proposal was rejected. Jun said that the reason the gallery owner wasn't sold on our proposal was because she considered this painting an illustration. Today I'm still baffled why she said that, because any competent art practitioner could easily see that A Gift of War is a serious work of art - a pure painting - and not an illustration.

Supremacy of Eve, 2006, acrylic on paper, Elvira Gonzaga collection