ADAM NACIANCENO'S CULTIVATING MY OWN FLAWS

By Arnel Mirasol

Cultivating My Own Flawa, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 3 X 4 feet

Flaws are part and parcel of everything. Nature has them. and so do human beings. Artists, by being more sensitive and attuned to outward appearances, are very much preoccupied with finding flaws. But they do not seek flaws to denigrate: they seek them to correct and perhaps make those who have them more visually appealing. Flaws shouldn't be look at as something permanent. They should be starting points on our path to bettering ourselves. Artists in particular should consider flaws not as prison walls that confine, but as hurdles to jump over and leave behind. That is the essence of life - the struggle to attain perfection or something resembling it. Again, the swirling drips of paint can be seen as something other than what they are - they could be looked upon now as the flaws marring the faces. But then, it is these twirls and swirls of white and black paints that lend these painting its abstract expressionistic charm. Without them, the bravura and dynamism that are this painting's principal strength would be lost. We now come to the question of Adam Nacianceno's choice of palette. Why does he persist in his achromatic ways you may ask. Nacianceno said that white and black represent for him the two principal landmarks in a man's like - which is birth and death. In between these two, according to him, are the various shades of gray, which a creative and resourceful man could turn into a full spectrum of colors that would represent a life lived to its fullest potential. 

ADAM NACIANCENO'S HUNTING MY FACELESS REFLECTION

By Arnel Mirasol

Hunting My Faceless Reflection, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 3 X 4 feet

Moments of doubt recur with disturbing frequency among artists, especially so among serious painters who don't look at their art making as mere money-making ventures. Being practical is not always a serious painter's strongest suit. Although the impulse to create never ceases, there are times when artists pause to ponder whether the things they are doing are worth their while. It is during those moments that artists conduct a thorough search for their own true selves. They are faceless at this point. They are not yet unmasked. The urge to veer off in another more practical direction surges strongly here. The artists dissect their faces with minute precision to seek there the marks that would indicate whether they are truly built to suffer and afterwards triumph for their art. The spirit of a true artist triumphs sometimes. But many fall along the way and leave serious art making to spend their energies in more lucrative enterprises. The face that can be discerned in the painting is the finished artwork, the creation. The paint drips and splatters, and the intricate patterning are the veils that mask the artist's face and render it faceless. Nacianceno's art is painting at its most serious. He had cast the die, in a manner of speaking, minutely analyzed his face that was previously masked by doubts, and saw it as the visage of a true artists willing to suffer, and perhaps triumph thereafter, for his art.

ADAM NACIANCENO'S ILLUSION OF AN UNFOLDED DREAM

By Arnel Mirasol

Illusion of an Unfolded Dream, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 3 X 4 feet

When we speak of dreams, we speak of illusions. We speak of hopes that have not come into fruition yet. There are pleasant dreams, and there are nightmares. It is the pleasant dreams, which are unfolded serenely during sleep, that we want to prolong. Here, Nacianceno speaks of abrupt awakening, of the sudden cessation of a pleasant dream, resulting in feelings of frustration and the strong desire to resume sleep to recapture that lost dream. That frustration is reflected in the raised eyebrow and glaring eye of the face in the painting. The drips and splashes of swirling paints, the smudges, and the blurring floral patterns hint of the turmoil a person deprived of his sweet dream is undergoing. The floral images here are all graphic patterns. They are not representations of natural flowers, and are all distinct or non-repeating. Doing that is not easy. But Nacianceno did that, facilely, proclaiming to all his heightened sense of design and rampant creativity. The very title of this painting, and all of his paintings for that matter, suggests Nacianceno's poetic leanings. His paintings are visual poems saying something without explicitly saying them.

ADAM NACIANCENO'S VIVID MEMORY OF ONE NIGHT BLISS

By Arnel Mirasol

This painting exemplifies best the theme that Adam Nacianceno tackles in his Unmasked series. Unmasking involves the exposure or revelation of the true hidden self. It is the peeling of layers that opaques a hidden truth. This painting, which tells of Nacianceno's recollection of a smile, is his way of prodding us to jog our memory and recall for ourselves the selfsame experience of being smiled at. Nacianceno claims that the bliss he speaks of here is not of the physical or sensual kind which dissipates easily. He portrays here the mental or intellectual kind of bliss that fixes itself in one's mind and stays there forever. This painting is a revolving composite of faces. We see eyes that seem to be randomly placed, but are in fact components of faces masked by repeating floral patterns. The fusion here of Jackson Pollock's drip and splatter technique and a Jugendstil artist 's obsession with intricate floral drawings is what distinguishes Adam Nacianceno's art from those done by abstract painters before him. Not to mention his obsessive predilection for black and white, which make him a rare bird indeed in a Philippine art scene aswarm with colorful artistic personas laden with their colorful paintings.





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RORSCHACHIST ABSTRACTION

By Arnel Mirasol

Red Nude, 2012, acrylic monoprint on paper, Ray Espinosa collection

The painting above, Red Nude, is an acrylic monoprint on paper. It is part of what I call my Rorschachist Abstraction series (a few samples below) - so called because the titles I gave to the paintings in this suite were based on images I seem to discern in the finished artworks. The Rorschach or Inkblot Test, named after its creator, Hermann Rorschach, is a psychological test where a patient is asked to describe what forms he sees in mirror-image inkblot marks on paper. The psychologist then used the patient's interpretation of the marks to adjudge what that patient's state of mind or personality characteristics are. It has been used to detect latent thought disorder in people, especially in cases where patients seem to hold back, and wouldn't volunteer to describe their thinking processes openly.

Arkong Bato (Stone Arch), 2008, oil on paper

Brown Cliffs of Nowhere, 2008, oil on paper

White Widow, 2012, acrylic monoprint on paper

Segmented Rainbow, 2012, acrylic monoprint on paper

Herodes, 2015,oil on paper

Little Ben, 2015, oil on paper

Even though my paintings from 1981 to 2007 are of the realist mode, I have in my list of favorite artists ten abstractionists who I know are also masters of the realist technique - like Buds Convocar, Ross Capili, Max Balatbat, Isagani Fuentes, Fitz Herrera, Demi Padua, Allain Hablo, Gus Albor, Lao Lian Ben and Raul Isidro. Their art have inspired me, and drove me into dabbling in abstraction. With good result I guess, because after my painting Evolution of the Naos (bottom) earned accolades from an art dealer and a few fellow artists, I am now convinced that the abstract route is the one I should try to traverse from now on.

But some may question my leap into abstraction. I have been a realist painter for more than three decades now, and many art theorists look askance at painters whose shift to abstraction is rather abrupt. Well, all I can say is my shift was not abrupt, because I have been at it - experimenting in creating new forms and utilizing new techniques - since 2008. I have paid my dues, so to speak. And I can say with confidence that I have exhausted all the possibilities of realism and have nothing more to add to it. 

Unlike some child abstract expressionists, or even adults for that matter,  who've gained prominence lately - thanks to online hype and sleek marketing strategies - what I worried about in my early youth was how to get my drawings of the human form right. The thought of leapfrogging into being an abstract expressionist by creating art using the drip and splatter technique never entered my mind. Those "instant abstractionists" have not done right, in my opinion. They have not hewed closely to what art and being an artist is about. The word art after all was derived from the Latin ars, which means skill. Thus, a painter who aspire to do abstractions should hone his skill in drawing and realistic painting first. He should first learn the rules before daring to break them. 

Evolution of the Naos, 2008, oil on paper

THE SWIMMING CLASS

By Arnel Mirasol

The Swimming Class, 2002. acrylic on paper, 15.5 X 11 inches, Dr. Manolet Delfin collection

I am a Tondo Boy through and through. It is my father, Edmundo, who is a full-blooded Cebuano. (My mother, Regina, is Tagalog.) But although I was born and raised in Manila, I still consider Oslob my hometown.

During the mid 1960s, when my father was just into a few years of working overseas as a seaman, I got the impression that he suggested to my mother that we relocate to Oslob, Cebu. My mother apparently vetoed the idea; and we siblings went along with her, not only because we were only minors then, but also because we already led a comfortable life in Tondo.

I was only a year old when my parents took me and my elder sister to Oslob for a visit. It was only in 1981, when I was already 24, that I returned there. What I saw impressed me for I have always loved the sea. There is no sea near Metro Manila that would equal the pristine, coral-laden quality of the sea of Oslob (see painting above).

After 1986, I and my wife Carina, and our two kids - Bahgee and Kai - went to Oslob whenever my father was home from his trips abroad and brought us along with him for a vacation (below). Since our house there is only about a hundred meters from the beach, our visits there were always bliss for us. My kids also love the sea. They are good swimmers, having learned the rudiments of swimming from me way back when they were in grade school.

In this photo from left: myself: Carina, Kai, Bahgee, John Falsis, and Dulce Falsis

In this photo from left : myself, Bahgee, Beejay Labiste, Chris  Einar San Agustin, and Jerry Dean

Kai swimming

Bahgee swimming

They are lucky; my father never taught me how to swim. But I truly love the sea that I persisted in going on sea outings with my childhood friends, mostly at the breakwater just off the Manila North Harbor, where I almost drowned on two occasions. I almost got drowned again in 1988, in Oslob, while snorkeling with my compadre Roland San Mateo, who, being only an arm length's away , was there to save me.

After that, I made it a point to truly learn swimming. I hanged out at swimming pools to watch and get tips from the truly adept swimmers. I even enrolled in a one-hour butterfly-stroke course with a lifeguard in Malabon. which I successfully hurdled, that to this day I can say with confidence that I know how to do butterfly. Pabagal nga lang nang pabagal, dahil pataba ako nang pataba, (Only, I got slower because I began to grow fatter), hahaha....

Photo taken in 2012 of myself at Balaki Island, Infanta, Pangasinan

ARTLETA

By Arnel Mirasol

Artleta, as you may have easily deduced, is a combination of the words Artist and Athlete (Atleta in Filipino). I coined that word to, ahem, describe myself - because aside from painting and literature, I also love sports. But artleta will better describe Francisco "Isko" de la Cruz, because he'd done feats of physical prowess which I've never done and can never hope to do. Look at what he is wearing- that's one of the many uniforms he'd collected from joining marathons. But before taking up running, Isko was first a cyclist. He is my cycling and swimming buddy. But unlike me, he's not merely a recreational cyclist. He's hardcore - he belongs to a group of cyclists (below) who have biked from Monumento to Sorsogon several times already, which distance took them four days to traverse. Their group have already gone biking to Bagac, Bataan; Jalajala, Rizal; Lucban, Quezon; and Manaoag, Pangasinan. They plan to do Monumento to Baguio next.

Isko is from Hagonoy, Bulacan. Although he is ten years younger than me, he was my classmate in Rizal Course at the University of the East, Caloocan. Don't ask me why we became classmates despite our age gap: it is a long story. Anyway, after leaving college, I again encountered Isko in a cocktail hosted by the Metrobank Foundation during their painting competition's awarding ceremony in 2000. We haven't lost contact ever since. Isko is also into t-shirt printing- a business that must be thriving because of its enormous demand on his time. He's been at it for more than a decade now, so I must say that Isko is already an expert in silkscreen techniques or serigraphy.

That's the reason why when the idea of reviving our old UESFA art group, the SETA Movement, and holding a group art exhibit came up, Isko, who does abstracts before, leaned more towards  using

serigraphic techniques in creating his artworks. This is not a novel technique. Although it was Andy Warhol who popularized its usage in the creation of fine paintings, It was Robert Rauschenberg, if I remember correctly, who first utilized the technique in his art making. Here in the Philippines, one guy who'd been making waves in both the local and international art scene also uses serigraphy in creating his abstract pieces. He is Max Balatbat- winner not only of first prizes in three major painting competitions here but also of the silver medal in the 2009 Florence Biennale. Although Isko hopes to also make his mark in the art scene here by using serigraphy, his intent is not do full abstractions in emulation of Max Balatbat. He is inclined more to turn out artworks celebrating the pop art ethos, which is the elevation of the mundane, the popular, the ubiquitous, the current, the high-tech, and the kitschy to high art status.

Isko dela Cruz  and  Mon Villanueva during the Renascence show

The artwork he showed at Seta Pilipinas' Renascence exhibit at the Sigwada Art Gallery is titled Literati (at right). It shows an intellectual - a reconfiguration of Rodin's The Thinker sculpture - reading what looks like an encyclopedia, while holding an umbrella to ward off heavy rain represented by the literal depiction of the idiom "raining cats and dogs". True to Isko's pop art intent, this painting contains elements common to many true-blue pop art works like cartoonish animal characters, loud colors, and tongue-in-cheek narration.