MY INTERVIEW WITH artyii

Me at work on an illustration for Alamat ng Palay

Artyii is an online art gallery based in Singapore. On May 5, 2011, I received an email from Olivia Isabelle of artyii asking me to agree to be interviewed by her. Below is an excerpt from her letter.

Dear Arnaldo Mirasol,

How have you been? Thank you for joining on Artyii.

Since you have joined Artyii, many people is interested to know more about you and your art. Therefore, we intend to have an interview with you. This interview will be placed under news section and give you 1 week homepage limelight. We hope by doing this, people will understand more about you and your art.

Here are some questions that you can answer. And if you are comfortable with this, please do reply us before 18 May 2011.

- Share a story with us, how did you start to paint?
- What factors influenced your art or style the most?
- What was the turning point in your artistic career?
- Tell us more about your latest works
- Tell us about the greatest sacrifice you had to make to pursue your artistic passion?...

Thank you very much and have a nice day.

Best Regards,

Olivia Isabelle

:

Below are my answers to her questions:

SHARE A STORY WITH US. HOW DID YOU START TO PAINT?

     I was still a boy and not yet of school age when I discovered that I like to draw. Of course, I don't have yet the manual dexterity of a mature painter and my drawings were just childish doodles similar to those done by other boys my age. But what set me apart from them later on was my persistence in learning how to draw as realistically as possible. I drew everyday on all available surfaces, even on the wooden walls of our house, that my mother had no choice but to provide me with all the art materials I requested. My first drawing tools were pencils and crayons. When I was in grade one, I started using watercolor and later on, colored pencils. I was also in grade one when my artistic talent was sort of discovered by my teacher in Grade One, Miss Mercy Ramos (below left).. She asked us, her pupils, to submit as project a big drawing of a bird, which I did with flourish, that she can't helped being fascinated upon seeing it. She then brought me forthwith to the office of the Assistant Principal who likewise praised my drawing profusely and advised me to keep up the good work.

     I was most prolific in my art making when I was twelve years old. It so happened that we had an Art subject under Mr. Joe R.R. Mortera (below right, the fellow at the center with sunglasses), who was also our scout and drum and bugle corps master. Under him, I was inspired and challenged to try doing several art genres, like mechanical drawing, colored pencil drawings of flowers, fruits, birds, fishes and other animals, watercolor portraits, and even "abstract expressionist" paintings on paper with melted crayons as medium. As a result of that frenetic artistic activity, I was able to compile  a thick album of artworks, which, unfortunately,  were all lost in a fire which burned down our house in 1969. A great pity, for I surely would have relished having them with me. It would be lovely having a visual record of my development as a painter, from the time I was a child until now when I'm in my mid-fifties. Anyway, all that is past. and I have moved on.

    I was around twelve or thirteen years old when my mother bought me a box of oil paints. Through habit, I first used water to thin the paint. I realized my mistake right away, got myself a few spoonfuls of edible oil in a cup (I've never heard of linseed oil, then), and climbed up to the roof of our new house to begin painting. I've also never heard of canvas, so, I just used a small piece of scrap plywood as my painting surface. I remember that for my first painting, I choose the sunset at Manila Bay as subject matter. Our old house is quite near the Manila North Harbor, and when I'm on the roof, I can see the bows, funnels, and masts of the ships, but not the sea. So, my painting didn't include the sea- just the colorful twilight sky and the mountains of the Bataan peninsula in the far distance. I smartly avoided painting the ships because I found them very complicated and way beyond my copying skills. In high school, a Literature teacher who also dabbled in painting, Mr. Benjamin Roda, sold me several Grumbacher "How to Paint" books. I say that everything I know about the fundamentals of painting I learned from those books. That's why when I entered the UST College of Fine Arts, I was already a bit adept in handling oils. 

WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCED YOUR ART OR STYLE THE MOST?

     I was also very much fascinated by books from the time I was a boy until now when I'm fast approaching senior-citizenhood, hahaha...Many times, I found my artistic inspirations in art books, like the time when I was browsing in a bookstore in 1981. I saw in a book a painting showing a naked child, a girl, lifting the edge of a blanket which is also the edge of the sea, and underneath which a dog lies sleeping. The title of the painting is Sea-Shade-Dog (below), and the artist is Salvador Dali. I was hooked.

The moment I had the money, I went back to that store to buy the book, which unfortunately was already sold. I saw another book, "The Life and Art of Salvador Dali" by Robert Descharnes, which I bought at once even though it's thicker and therefore more expensive. The book, which is still with me and which had become my painting "bible" of sorts,  had provided inspirations for many of my early surrealist paintings. I don't know if I should be flattered or humbled, but every time a person somewhat well-versed on art saw my work, he was sure to mention, in one way or another, in relation to my work, the name Dali. That was in the early eighties, the time when the the Marcos regime was being set-up for its eventual downfall. It was also the heyday of the Filipino social realists who focused on doing art with overt political and socially-relevant subject matter. Images of poverty, exploitation, and government repression were the staples of paintings then. And I rode the trend.  I immediately saw then the twist needed to make my surrealist paintings a bit different from Dali's. If Dali's surrealism emanated as he asserted from his subconscious, mine emanated from my conscious awareness of what ails Philippine society. Though the paintings I did during that period weren't commercially successful, I could say that it had given me some foretaste of Andy Warhol's proverbial "fifteen minutes of fame"(below). A painting from that period- which I called my "social-surrealist" phase- won for me in 1984 the top prize in the First Metrobank Annual Painting Competition. It was a most prestigious competition then as it is at present. Now, three decades after my encounter with that surrealist book, I still haven't weaned myself away from the influence exerted on me by art books. I still sought inspirations from them from time to time. I bought books whenever my meager finances allowed it, that I now have in my cramped studio a mini-library of sorts.

My fifteen minutes of fame

WHAT WAS THE TURNING POINT IN YOUR ARTISTIC CAREER?

     Well, I could clearly see that turning point.  I would say that it was when I got hired in 1996 by Reni Roxas and Marc Singer, publishers of Tahanan Books, to illustrate picture books for them. It was while working for Tahanan that me and my artworks got featured in magazines and newspapers. I can also say that I was at the peak of my illustration career when I did for Tahahan Books the illustrations for three books, namely, "The Brothers Wu and the Good-Luck Eel", "Hans Christian Andersen: Once Upon a Time", and "The Brothers Grimm: Long Ago and Far Away". I even got to show and sell the original illustrations for the last two books at my two consecutive solo exhibitions at the Crucible Gallery here in Manila. My second show at the Crucible also yielded an unexpected bonus; it managed to earn a flattering review from the highly-respected Filipino art critic, Constantino Tejero (below right).

The supposed excellence of my illustrations for the Brothers Wu, in turn, landed me in the 2002 Honour List of the International Board on Books for Young People which is based in Basel, Switzerland. But what made me really consider my years with Tahanan as the turning point in my art career was because it was during that time that I again got the idea to do some serious painting on the side. The suite of paintings I managed to complete in between the time I was doing illustrations was exhibited side by side with my Brothers Grimm illustrations at the Crucible. I realized that the line dividing illustration from serious painting is really very thin, and it really won't take much effort shifting from one genre to another. So, that's what's keeping me busy nowadays- doing illustrations and pure paintings one after the other

TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR LATEST WORKS.

     I am now on my third year of working on the illustrations for the book tentatively titled "Mga Modernong Alamat/ Modern Legends". The book, written by Segundo Matias, Jr., requires 28 illustrations, and is to be published by Lampara Books. The book is a compilation of four stories (Legend of the Eagle, Legend of the Bamboo, Legend of Rice, and Legend of the Carabao), and each story would have seven illustrations each. Illustrations for Legends of the Eagle (below) and Bamboo were done in acrylic on paper.

After completing the 14 illustrations for those two stories, I kind of grew tired of the whole thing, and decided to do something more challenging, which is to do the next series of illustrations for the "Alamat ng Palay/Legend of Rice" in oil, on big canvases. And it was challenging indeed, and at least for me,  ground-breaking too. Because in this series of illustrations, I felt that I have developed new composition and brush techniques which I could use later on in my paintings. And so far, the remarks made on my current output is very heartening; a friend even considered one illustration I did, the "Miss Butterfly" (below left), as the best artwork I've done so far.

As I have said before, I'm also doing some serious painting on the side, which I see as the more experimental aspect of my art making. Before 2008, the paintings I did can be categorized in terms of technique as sharp focus realist art - the same label tagged onto Andrew Wyeth's paintings. It was during that year that I did "Venus Of Boracay", my version of Titian's "Venus of Urbino", but which I painted in imitation of Fernando Botero's obese nude forms. Everything in that painting was experimental- from my utilization of figural distortion and abstract forms, to my employment of palette knife for applying paint to the background. The "Venus of Boracay" belong to what I called my Deconstructed Venuses series, which would later on include two more paintings- "My Serenade" and "The Decline and Fall of the Greek Trumpeter". I plan to do a fourth  painting which would involve my appropriating, disrobing and bloating of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". Some people may consider this Deconstructed Venuses images as pretty profane, so, to even things up, I took a new tack, and started a series on people involve in acts other than seduction. Since obesity is oftentimes associated with excess and decadence, I did a complete reverse and drew my new figures, of women playing the guitar and violin among others, thinner and long-limbed (below right)

Gregorian Cant: Homage to Heart

TELL US ABOUT THE GREATEST SACRIFICE YOU HAD TO MAKE TO PURSUE YOUR ARTISTIC PASSION.

     I remember the time, just before I finished high school, when my father had a talk with me. He had always known that I wanted to take up fine arts in college. But my father said that I should take up law instead. He said that he could afford to finance my college studies no matter what course I take because he was already earning good money at the time as a chief marine engineer. He added that having a lawyer in the family was a sort of family dream, because his own father wanted him to be a lawyer, too. And besides (and this floored me), he said that since lawyers are very fond of arguing, the law profession would suit me fine, because I was fond anyway of reasoning out with and answering back at my mother.

Well, looking back, I realized that I really would have been a lawyer by now, had I put my mind into it. I've always known that I have a sharp memory, and am  a voracious reader too, so all the required readings and memorizations at law school wouldn't have intimidated me, and passing the bar exams would perhaps be just a breeze. But the pull of the muse was stronger. When the time came to enroll at the UST College of Fine Arts, I didn't even chose as my major or specialization the more practical and commercial choice, which is Advertising. I chose to pursue Painting, which according to my eldest sister, Ate Lina (below, at extreme left of photo) is a profession suitable only for rich people who'll still eat even if they never sell a single painting. She must be wrong there, because nowadays, I see all around me painters who've become rich doing paintings full-time. Of course, she may have uttered the truth in my case, because after decades of striving, I still have not hit the jackpot, so to speak. But the ball game is still on, and the wheel is still turning, and I'm sure that one way or the other, the hoped for fame and fortune will one day be mine.- hopefully, hahaha...

In this photo from left, front row: Mama Ninay and Papa Nene. Second  row: Ate Lina, myself, Rudy, and Rizza.

     But seriously now, let me conclude with these words. Truman Capote, in the preface to his book "Music for Chameleons", wrote: When God hands you a gift, He also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation." Well, that is the story of my life, an artist's life, which in retrospect, seem more torturous than gratifying. But I have no regrets: I chose to be a painter. I'm not particularly devout, but my fervent belief in my destiny as a painter betrays a certain spirituality on my part. I am convinced that our Creator placed me on this earth to create art.