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.

ARNALDO BERNABE MIRASOL : Painter and Illustrator

Photo taken in 2006 of the artist in his studio

ARNALDO BERNABE MIRASOL, popularly known as Arnel Mirasol in the Philippine art circle, was born and raised in Tondo, Manila, Philippines. He took up Fine Arts, major in painting at the University of Santo Tomas and the University of the East. Mirasol began working as a professional artist in 1981, when he was hired as editorial cartoonist for the newspaper People's Journal Tonight. In 1987, he applied and was hired for the same job in Joe Burgos' We Forum Publications. In between his cartooning stints, Mirasol worked as gallery assistant at the Galeria de las Islas, and was an educational book illustrator from 1988 to 2000.

In 1996, Mirasol showed his portfolio to Reni Roxas and Marc Singer, publishers of Tahanan Books for Young Readers. Being especially impressed by the cover art he did for Phoenix Publishing House, Reni and Marc commissioned Mirasol to do the illustrations for their collaborative book First Around the Globe: The Story of Enrique". Mirasol went on to illustrate four more books for Tahanan: Tamales Day, The Brothers Wu and the Good-Luck Eel, Once Upon a Time, and Long Ago and Far Away" (below right).

Mirasol's other books are The Origin of the Frog, Anina ng mga Alon (Anina of the Waves), and Mga Modernong Alamat (Modern Legends) Volume 4.Two of his books were prize-winners abroad. The Origin of the Frog won a runner-up award in the 12th Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustration in Tokyo, in 2000; while the excellence of his illustrations for The Brothers Wu and the Good-luck Eel landed him in the Honour List of the Basel-based International Board on Books for Young people. (below left).

Mirasol has had three solo art exhibitions, so far - once at the Hiraya Gallery and twice at the Crucible (below right). He had also participated in several group exhibitions. His paintings in the eighties, although belonging to the social-realist school, were tempered somewhat with surrealist color and humor. One of his paintings from that period, the Hungry Child Dissected, won in 1984, one of the three Best Entry awards in the First Metrobank Annual painting Competition.

2008 was a landmark year for Mirasol. It was during that time that he finally weaned himself away from the sharp-focus realist style of his previous paintings. While his earlier works were rendered with a meticulous attention to details, his recent illustrations and paintings (below) - with their simplification, distortion, and loud coloration - have a decidedly modern and pop art feel to them. Mirasol still lives in Tondo, with wife Carina, and sons Brando de Niro and Karel Andrei. 

Miss Butterfly, 2010, oil on canvas, 24 X 33 inches, Segundo Matias Jr. collection

Bloody Mary, 2009, oil on canvas, 8 X 10 inches, Sari Ortiga collection

FIRST AROUND THE GLOBE: THE STORY OF ENRIQUE

By Arnel Mirasol

Although I began doing the illustrations for the book The Origin of the Frog earlier, it was First Around the Globe which got published first, in 1997. This book was a collaborative work by authors Reni Roxas and Marc Singer, who were also the publishers of Tahanan Books for Young Readers. Reni and Marc were very generous to me. They paid me thirty-five thousand pesos for the illustrations which took me only a month to complete. That was a princely amount then, because publishers at the time will only pay twenty-five thousand pesos at the most to the illustrator. (Rex Printing only paid me fifteen-thousand pesos for The Origin of the Frog.)

The book is about Enrique el Negro.Enrique was the slave bought by Magellan in Malacca, where Magellan served as soldier. When Magellan sailed to the Philippines, he brought Enrique with him to serve as his interpreter in the islands he planned to go to. When they landed in Homonhon, an Island off Samar, Magellan realized that Enrique couldn't speak the language of the place which is Waray-Waray. It was only when they sailed to Limasawa Island in Southern Leyte and Cebu, that Enrique became useful as interpreter, because Enrique understood and spoke the language of the inhabitants there which is Sugbuanon (Cebuano). This book proposes the theory that because Enrique can speak Cebuano, he was definitely a Cebuano, and that he - not Magellan, nor Juan Sebastian Elcano - was the first circumnavigator of the world. This book tells of how Enrique was captured in Cebu by pirates from Mindanao, sold at the Malacca slave market, and brought by Magellan to Spain -  from where they sailed south-westward to the tip of South America, through the South Pacific Ocean, to Guam, Homonhon, Limasawa, Cebu, and Mactan - and then Cebu again, where he presumably stayed after the death of his master.

An amusing incident involving the book was related to me by my father Edmundo. One time in the late 1990s, he was aboard a Superferry  bound for Cebu. A close relative, Nick Gomocio, was with him. While sailing, they heard from the intercom a voice announcing an "on board sale" of a book. The book was First Around the Globe. When my father heard my name mentioned as the illustrator, he and Nick rushed to the book sale site, and promptly introduced himself to Reni Roxas as the father of the illustrator. Reni quickly quipped in reply: "Hindi ho maikakaila, Magkamukha ho kayo.  (It can't be denied. You resemble each other.)"

Cover art, 1997, acrylic on paper, Marc Singer collection

DKNY EXPRESS

By Arnel Mirasol

DKNY Express, 2012, oil on canvas, 24 X 18 inches

This painting is closely connected with two of my UST High School classmates - Arn Cruz and Ray Espinosa. The DKNY of the title doesn't mean Donna Karan New York. It is the tongue-in-cheek abbreviation, or initialism, for Divisoria Kanto ng Ylaya (Divisoria corner Ylaya) which are places in Manila beloved by bargain-hunters. I first heard of Divisoria Kanto ng Ylaya from Arn Cruz when he was driving me and another classmate home to Tondo. When I said that our house is just walking-distance from Ilaya Street, he said something to this effect, "Ah, so you live in DKNY".

My first impulse when doing this painting was to put the words "Viva Santo Nino" on the headboard of the jeepney, and title this piece Fiesta Serenade. But then Arn's DKNY joke came to mind. I adjudged then and there that DKNY Express is the better title because of its humor and wit.. Thanks Arn for giving me the idea for the title.

Ray Espinosa. on the other hand, bought this painting. There was a time during the latter months of 2013 when I really need cash fast. And to sell fast, I offered this painting at a very low price to Ray. I even included as sweeteners two of my small abstracts on paper (sample below left) to the package. What Ray said after reading my message surprised me - very pleasantly. He said that I shouldn't sell my paintings cheap, and offered 30 thousand pesos for the whole lot. Now, DKNY Express is a relatively small work, and the two abstracts are definitely small and very easy to do. (I completed them in a matter of minutes.) I've sold a painting (see bottom) slightly bigger than DKNY Express for 60 thousand pesos, but this was during a solo show, where prices are naturally higher because of the markup set by the gallery and other considerations. It therefore pleases me no end that a long-time art collector who bought from me directly would pay a relatively high price for DKNY Express..

Red Nude, 2012, acrylic on paper, 12 X 18 inches

But Ray, it seems, belong to that rare breed of art collectors, true art collectors, who buys art not for speculation or investment, but  (to borrow Leonidas Benesa's words) "for their own personal delectation." He is not a bargain-hunter when it comes to art buying, Which just goes to show how high artists are on Ray's list of worthy individuals. Thank you very much, Ray.

Seraglio Fantasy, 2005, oil on canvas, 24 X 24 inches

THE WILD SWANS

By Arnel Mirasol

Of all the illustrations I did, The Wild Swans is the one most borrowed by bloggers and website owners. I'm flattered. But I'll be flattered more if the people who shared this image asked permission from me first - or better yet, from the real copyright owner, Reni Roxas - before posting this image to their sites. When I searched the internet, I discovered that when you googled Arnaldo Mirasol, around fourteen websites will appear with the Wild Swans as adornment. Here is the list of those websites: Sacred Familiar, Watercolordreams, indigodreams, sosuperawesome, Dangerous Prayer, illustratosphere, Altared Spaces, Illustrated imaginarium, Enlighten me, In The Land Of Lux, The Suffolks, Pinterest, traveling ghost, and papertigers. Of these. only the last two made it a point to obtain my permission.

(Shown below are cropped screenshot samples of those websites.)

So, Reni Roxas, publisher of Tahanan Books, must have chosen right when she picked The Wild Swans to add to her collection - instead of The Little Mermaid (below), the cover art for the book Once Upon a Time, which many consider as my best work. Reni said that she wants the Wild Swans because it can stand by itself - that is, it doesn't need any manuscript to define or explain it. or give it significance. Many agreed with her, because admirers of The Wild Swans see it as not just a "mere illustration": they almost always describe it as like a surrealist painting. Which is a compliment in my opinion, because I consider surrealism as the most cerebral of all art movements or styles.

The Little Mermaid's "own website"

MONNAR BALDEMOR'S EVASION AND ESCAPE

By Arnel Mirasol

The boy Monnar watching his father Manny Baldemor at work

How does a son escape the long shadow cast by a famous father? Monnar Baldemor does it by signing his paintings merely with his first name, and by creating works antipodal in both theme and technique to the paintings of his father Manny.

Since first stepping into the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts in Caloocan, Monnar had tried his best to downplay his relationship to the famous painter Manny Baldemor. He said that the pressure on him to prove himself worthy of being called Manny's son was palpable. What Monnar dreaded most at that time was to be compared to Manny and be found wanting.

That's the reason why Monnar pursued cartooning and illustrations when he graduated from college in 1989 with a BFA degree major in Advertising. He shunned serious painting for several years, and worked as graphic artist and later on as art director for the magazine Woman Today. He also did comic strips on the side ( sample below)  for newspapers and Glitter Magazine. He is working for sixteen years now as Design Director for Women's Journal Magazine.

But the call of the muse was insistent, and the son of the famous painter cannot ignore it for long.

Monnar did what another former cartoonist did. Like Malang, Monnar left cartooning and went full time into painting. But Monnar, unlike Malang and his father Manny, didn't adopt the cubist style originated by National Artist Vicente Manansala. He marched to the beat of different drummers, so to speak. And they are all foreigners. Monnar professed admiration for Hieronymus Bosch, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and Sergio Aragones : an admiration  manifested all too clearly in the iconography and the powerful narrative content of his drawings and paintings (below).

Monnar didn't explicitly mentioned Paul Klee among his favorites, but I discern traces of Klee's influence, inadvertent though it may be, in the way Monnar colors his works (below), and his fascination with lines. Paul Klee's famous quote about the dot being a line that went for a walk was probably Monnar's (who is an ardent proponent of dynamic linearism in art) guiding artistic principle too. We can perhaps also attribute this linearism and fondness for filling up his canvases with distorted figures to Monnar's past as a cartoonist. Monnar's early works are composite caricatures elevated to the status of fine paintings.

Odyssey

His painting Terminal Illusions (below right) is a case in point. At first glance, this painting would induce viewers to conclude that it is but another surrealist painting that deals with metaphysics and dreams. But Monnar promptly disabused me of that notion. He explained that this painting is merely about the traffic problem in Metro Manila and elsewhere. He opined that no matter how many overpasses and fly-overs are constructed, the problem would still be there - unresolved and stressing out everyone all around.

Though obfuscated somewhat by incongruously juxtaposed images that hinted at some psychological dysfunction, the very mundane and humor-laced message of this painting would make it an editorial cartoon, blown up to medium-sized painting proportions.

Monnar has mellowed now. He had eschewed social commentary in his recent works, excising from his graphic repertoire grotesqueries, like disembodied body parts and some such incongruities, that would make his paintings pregnant with meaning. These new works (below) approach non-objective abstraction because of the reduction and simplification they have undergone. These abstract paintings, with their plethora of twisting lines, are the most Klee-esque among his works. They looked celebratory, and would perhaps indicate Monnar's coming to terms with things as they are and escape from a rather provocative artistic past.

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The Smaller Cloud

City of Lights

Suburbia

Soft Act with Architectonic Future

Monnar will hold a solo show at the Artologist Gallery this coming August. This show would mark Monnar's return to clear figuration. The paintings for this show, which are about fiestas, are a far cry from the paintings that Monnar used to make. When asked about the shift, Monnar said "Ganyan dapat ang mga artists. Kailangan flexible ka. Hindi puro angst. Meron din naman tayong lighter side.

Even though Monnar's new works have traces of Manny's themes and technique, he won't be compared anymore to his father. That's because Monnar, early in his career, had already produced a body of works so packed with power and so replete with profundities that the painters he'll be compared to if he maintains his course are the artists who are stars of the international art firmament. And that could only mean one thing - Monnar Baldemor is beginning to cast a long shadow himself.

Monnar with wife Cheryl