MON VILLANUEVA'S FISH FIXATION

By Arnel Mirasol

Mon Villanueva at work

Don't be fooled by the beer bottle Mon Villanueva is holding. Mon is no bohemian. He is a devoted family man who considers his wife and daughter his treasures. Well, he may drink from time to time as most males do, but drinking is not the be all of his existence. For all we know, that Red Horse Beer bottle Mon is holding may not contain beer at all - but linseed oil or turpentine. Seriously now: Mon Villanueva also amazed me. Like Jojo Garcia, he is another fine arts classmate whom I pointedly ignored during our college days at the University of the East (UE). That's because he looked to me like another happy go lucky guy who's head was not in his studies.

Blue Period

Fishes of Eight

Anyhow (Grilled)

So, you can just imagine my surprise when news reached me that he won first prize in the 1994 Metrobank Young Painters Annual. My surprise, I must confess, was tinged with envy, because his prize money was fifty thousand pesos, while the prize I won in the first edition of that contest in 1984 was only ten thousand. I was further disappointed because he forgot to treat us, his old classmates, to even a few bottles of beer. Unlike me, who spent a whole day on gimmicks with Bert Falsis and Rolly Cruz - the guys who accompanied me to the bank when I had my cheque encashed. Mon's winning entry to the Metrobank competition, Nang Mahimbing si Mariang Makiling, Nanalanta ang mga Sakim is in oil. It depicts a crowd, a group of small-time loggers perhaps, who are ravaging a forest of leafless trees. It was a disturbing yet charming work - done when he was already a student at the Philippine Women's University, where he transferred when he left UE. Painted with much skill, and a rather obsessive attention to detail - that winning painting showed that the intervening years weren't wasted; that Mon, had perhaps, chucked off his non-conformist ways and had trodden instead the straight path towards the thorough honing of his craft.

He again surprised me several years later when he became a finalist in one Philip Morris painting competition, where his entry was done entirely in carved bamboo colored with oil paint. I wasn't much impressed with that work because it looked, with its garish colors, handicraft-y to me. But my rather low regard for his bamboo relief pieces was then. Now, Mon had already hurdled the barrier separating mere craft from fine art, and his recent pieces, all intricately done and in harmonious colors yet, look so pleasing to my eyes. Today, what I envy Mon for was his originality. I don't remember any fine artists who once used bamboos as medium. Mon's pieces are uniquely his own, while mine suffers from being an amalgam of my various influences. Mon is original, I am not.

We can see from samples of Mon's art above that he is very much fascinated by the fish motif. He was not the first one. Many painters before him have depicted fishes in their paintings, though not obsessively so - like Picasso, Magritte, and our very own Ang Kiukok and E.R. Tagle - and even me, for that matter (below right). But we were all sissies compared to Mon, because our paintings were accomplished by near-effortless flicks of the wrist and of the hand holding the brushes: while Mon's bamboo reliefs require brawn and finely-honed woodworking skills.

The Ichtus

Pablo Picasso at work

A painting by Rene Magritte

A painting by Ang Kiukok

A painting by E.R. Tagle

I

I can only surmise why Mon is obsessed with fishes. The fish - the ichtus (above left) - you see, was a symbol used by early Christians to identify themselves, That fact may make me conclude that Mon is probably a very devout Christian nowadays. Or, Mon perhaps might be a secret adherent of E.R. Tagle's Positivism dogma that posited fish to be a positivist or prosperity symbol. This conclusion is nearer to the truth, I must say, if we consider the painting Fishes of Eight, because the number 8 as we all know is considered a lucky number by the Chinese - and luck in all cultures is almost always tied up with material abundance and prosperity. But whatever his reasons are, all that Mon has to do if he wants luck to saunter after him like a frisky pet dog is to continue turning out masterly bamboo reliefs like he had been doing for several years now. And he need not limit himself to doing rehashes of fish compositions, ad nauseam, because any other image if painted - or in his case, carved- with great care and skill can only invite luck and praises from his admirers, which now include me.

Mon Villanueva and Zero