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The Art of Gore

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  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 47. THE ART OF GORE Years ago, I saw on television a Filipino painter who uses real human skulls as his painting medium. I repeat, as painting medium, not as motif or subject matter. The painter broke the skull into several pieces and used each as some kind of chalk which he rubbed on big squarish sheets of abrasive paper (papel de liha) which served as his canvases. The abstract images he produced consisting of white striations and hatchings would have won the nod of art enthusiasts with modernist leanings or taste. But the gross nature of the medium I'm sure would repulse them instead. The fellow apparently relished demonstrating his technique as revealed by his brisk manner and his quite articulate reply to the interviewer's queries. He was obviously euphoric; he savored to the last delectable morsel his fifteen minutes of fame. Featured in the same program was another painter who uses his own blood as painting medium ins...
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Paintings for Free

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Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book                  Essay 46. PAINTINGS FOR FREE I consider the painting behind me in the photo above as my best surrealist work. It remains unsold to this day. The title of this painting when I exhibited it at the Crucible Gallery in 2007 was "Happy Man". Ii was shown again under another title, "Corrupt Bureacrat Dissected", at the Altromondo Gallery in 2010 during a group art exhibit of winners in the Metrobank annual painting competitions. Two collectors have offered to buy this painting, but both deals fell through. One collector who expressed interest in buying this was one of the VIP guests in the  Metrobank exhibit at Altromondo. She said that she's going to have this painting reserved for herself because she wants to give this as gift to the then newly-elected President Noynoy Aquino, to warn him of this type of politicians who'll definitely hover around him in the coming days. I was ela...
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Big Apple Dreams' Twin

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Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. My Thoughts on the Matter ESSAY 45. BIG APPLE DREAMS' TWIN By Arnaldo Mirasol Although abstract, "White Head" (first image below) is the twin painting of the very figurative "Big Apple Dreams". I called it that because I did and finished both paintings almost simultaneously using the same oil paints I had on my palette. The surplus paints after I concluded a day of working on Big Apple Dreams was what I applied afterwards on the abstract canvas. Even though I'm satisfied at how this abstract painting came out, I was still pleasantly surprised when somebody bought it. White Head was part of Kartini Asia Gallery's 2018 group exhibit at the Alabang Country Club. I originally titled this abstract "Fliptop Champion", in reference to that disgusting so-called modern balagtasan - Fliptop - where declaiming protagonists shout expletives, obscene words, and insults at each other, instead of arguing using lilting  poeti...
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On Multiplicity of Styles

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  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 44. ON MULTIPLICITY OF STYLES My painting "Jolly Kids" (above) clearly shows the stylistic gulf separating my current artworks from those I did in the 1980s up to the year 2007. My UST high school classmate Vince Tabirara remarked that he can't quite figure out my style. He said that my artworks don't have a distinct look that would readily identify them as mine. I replied that my having a multiplicity of styles was inevitable, considering that the artworks he saw in my portfolio were done over a period of more than thirty years. I had a varied art career. My first professional works were paintings belonging to the social realist school, but with a surrealist twist a la Dali. I was an editorial cartoonist for several years and then textbook illustrator, jobs where I put my knack for cartooning and caricatures to good use.  It was when I became a picture book illustrator that I can truly say that I've exhausted ...
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Facets of Manhood

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Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 43. FACETS OF MANHOOD by Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  The setting of the painting "Seraglio Fantasy" is Lido Beach in Noveleta, Cavite. The model for the foreground figure is my wife Carina. The photograph I used as reference was a picture I took of her at the resort when we and her high school 'barkadas' went there sometime in 1981. The naked figures behind are mannequins that were supposedly brought to life. An oil painting on canvas, Seraglio Fantasy is a relatively small work, measuring just 2 X 2 feet, I guess I can consider it as the 'piece de resistance' of my second solo show at the Crucible Gallery because it was the highest-priced painting I've sold up to that time. Seraglio Fantasy was one of the three oil paintings on canvas I exhibited in that 2007 solo exhibit. The other two are "Trekkers' Bliss (Taal Crater Lake) and "Snorkeler's Blues (Ungab Rock Formation)". The rest of...
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My Most Borrowed Illustration

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  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 42. MY MOST BORROWED ILLUSTRATION Of all the illustrations I did, The Wild Swans was the one most borrowed by bloggers. 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 on their sites. When I searched the internet, I discovered that when you googled Arnaldo Mirasol, around twelve blog sites will appear with the Wild Swans as cover photo. Last I checked, here is the list of those sites: Sacred Familiar, Watercolordreams, indigodreams, sweetpeapath, sosuperawesomw, Dangerous Prayer, illustratosphere, Altared Spaces, and  traveling ghost. Of these, only traveling ghost made it a point to obtain my permission. 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, which many consider as...
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Thumbelina Illustrations

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Amirasolo and Other Essays       Part 3. In my Book                                           Essay 41. THUMBELINA ILLUSTRATIONS Before I began doing the illustrations for a book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, Tahanan Books publisher Reni Roxas lent me several foreign picture books for me to peruse and to be inspired or even challenged by. One of those books was Wayne Anderson's "Thumbelina".  True enough, I was indeed so inspired by one of Anderson's illustrations that I patterned the composition of my Thumbelina illustration after it, with the difference that the human figure and the other elements in the picture I drew are realistic or un-stylized. Anderson's Illustrations, although cartoony, rest on a higher level of artistry than comics Illustrations and manga or animation and anime, all of which are but black and white line drawings colore...
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