AMIRASOLO AND OTHER ESSAYS

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...

  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 ...

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...

  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...

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...

Amirasolo and Other Essays                         Part 3. In my Book Essay 40. THE BUTANDINGS' PICNIC  ZONE The painting at the top of the photo collage above is a composite where I used as references several pictures taken at different locations and occasions. I wasn't even at sea when my picture was taken. I was inside our house and wasn't wearing around my head any 'antipara' or wood-carved goggles at all. The rocky island behind is Sumilon, way back when it was still undeveloped and hasn't become the high-end tourist destination it is now. The distant mountains and the white shoreline at left is Oslob, Cebu, where our branch of the Mirasol clan hails from. The characters of course are me and Carina with our two sons, and their cousins and friends. I painted Bahgee into this picture thrice and Kai twice. The event depicted in this painting happened in 1994, when whale sharks as tourist attraction were still unhear...

  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book                                                                           Essay 39. WORKS ON PAPER Noted painter Renato Habulan invited me to join him and other noted artists, Fred Liongoren, Benjie Torrado Cabrera, and Pinggot Zuleta, in an exhibit of paintings on paper. The show, "Papelismo",  opened at the Crucible Gallery on September 4, 2012. It was the first in a series of shows by the Papelismo group. It was late 2011 when Ato send me a message about his plan to mount such a show, because he was of the impression then that works on paper were supposedly being ignored by artists and art collectors alike.  Well, there may be truth to that, because Atty. Jing David, owner of Galerie Anna, had also observed the same thing. We were at the Al...

Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 38. DKNY EXPRESS I painted DKNY Express in 2012. The jeepney image was a variant of a cartoon I designed and printed on t-shirts in 1992. The female guitarist figure in turn was an image I came up with after I switched style in 2008, and started experimenting and subjecting my human forms to simplification and distortion. I called the suite of paintings of slender females I produced during this period my 'slim series'. 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 frequented by bargain-hunters. I first heard of 'Divisoria Kanto ng Ylaya' from Arn Cruz when he gave me and another classmate a lift in his car on our way home to Tondo. When I said that our house is ju...

  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 37. EROTIC AIR IN THE TALE OF RAPUNZEL Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn't have children in mind as their primary audience when they put out the first editions of their book, Kinder-und Hausmarchen (Children and Household Tales) in 1812 and 1815. It was only in the 1819 edition did they begin to eliminate passages with erotic content to make it more palatable to bourgeois morality and taste. For the curious out there, here is the English translation of an excerpt from "Rapunzel" as originally written and published in 1812: "At first Rapunzel was afraid, but soon she took such a liking to the young king that she made an agreement with him: he was to come everyday and be pulled up. Thus they lived merrily and joyfully for a certain time, and the fairy did not discover anything until one day when Rapunzel began talking to her and said, "Tell me, Mother Gothel, why do you think my clothes have become too tight for m...

   Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 36. ARTIST STATEMENT FOR LORD OF THE REEF (Lalyn Buncab, curator of the Museum of the Dela Salle University, invited me to join an exhibit she's organizing. That was in early 2018. The show, MUKHA: PORTRAITS OF HISTORIES AND STORIES, had for its theme, portraits. Posted above is my piece for the show---the painting "Lord of the Reef". Below is my Artist Statement.) ARTIST STATEMENT This painting is a self-portrait---though not obviously so, because of the diving mask covering my face. If you look closely you'll discern that the eyes, eyebrows, and moustache of the diver are my eyes, eyebrows, and moustache. Also, the attire and diving gear were what I used to wear then. But even though this work is a self-portrait, the scene is just imaginary. I am just role-playing here. The painting is a portrayal of my fascination with the sea and my admiration for and awe of spear-fishermen who I considered before as sportsmen...

  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 35. BLACK The story Mon Villanueva told us might be apocryphal. The source of that story was a former student of the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts (UESMFA). This student related that on the first day of their painting class, their instructor inspected their oil paint sets, took the tubes of black paint out of the boxes, and threw them out the window. The reason, the instructor declared, was because in his class, the use of black in their paintings is forbidden. That was a ridiculous and tyrannical gesture---an overacted dramatics by that instructor who could have just ordered his students to leave their tubes of black paint at home. Some art teachers from way way back have forbidden the use of black in painting. I've heard first hand one or two instructors telling us to use, in lieu of real black, a mixture of all  the primary colors---lots of blue and red and a little yellow. That was a dictum pro...

  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. As I See it Essay 34. CERTIFICATES OF INAUTHENTICITY One day, I and my cycling buddy Isko Dela Cruz dropped by the house of a painter who was copying an Amorsolo painting. The painter's improvised studio was outside the house, on the narrow front yard separated from the sidewalk by a top to bottom grill fence. The sidewalk was along Samson Road in Caloocan, just walking distance from Baltazar Bukid Street where Isko lives. The fence being just grill work, we could see from where we stood on the sidewalk the man at work. The painter, whose name I forgot, told us that he's already based in Canada, an immigrant petitioned by his daughter. He's just here on vacation, he said. On his easel was an unfinished reproduction of an Amorsolo painting. According to him, he used to do several such reproductions when he was younger which he consigned with a gallery in Ermita. While conversing with him, a friend of his, a fellow painter, came along....

  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 33. VHENG AND THE SUPREMACY OF EVE The title of the painting below is "Supremacy of Eve". It is an acrylic on paper work measuring 30 x 22 inches. It was bought by a former and very much younger schoolmate from the University of the East School of Music and Fine Arts, Elvira Gonzaga. We call her Vheng. Vheng was one of those from our school who made good in life. As I have said before, Vheng tops my list of successful Fine Arts friends because painters like me hold art collectors in high esteem. I'm sure Jojo Garcia and Oca Magos regard her highly too. We three are the full-time painters in our group. We owed Vheng a lot. She never hesitated to buy our works everytime we offer them to her. Vheng must have liked the Supremacy of Eve per se. But what could have added to her interest in it was the fact that this painting was written about in a newspaper. The highly-respected art critic Constantino Tejero wrote a revie...

  Amirasolo and Other Essays Part 3. In my Book Essay 32. KIRSTEN AND EGON I had an online tiff in 2011 with Kirsten Anderberg. An American, she described herself as a feminist, historian, human rights activist, musician, and writer. She was also a 1997 graduate of the Whittier Law School. So, she must be a full-pledged lawyer by now. Awesome credentials indeed, anyway you look at it. And I, who didn't finished college, was definitely in awe. Our conversation began amiably enough. A fan apparently of my artworks, she offered to do a write-up on me and my art. But she got nasty and started to label me a male chauvinist and homophobe when I began contradicting her so-called  'feminist' views which I thought unfair and out of line. In the end, she withdrew her offer to write about me, to which I replied, good riddance! I said that I wouldn't want to collaborate with a person who goes ballistic everytime she's contradicted. Our disagreement was caused mainly by the pa...

                       . Amirasolo and Other Essays                         Part 3. In my Book                                             Essay 31. VINTAGE BOOKSTORE, VINTAGE BOOK In 1999, Leonard Aguinaldo, Nemi Miranda, Steve Santos, and I was commissioned by Rex Printing to do an artwork each for their 2000 calendar. It was a special year for them because it was Rex Bookstore's 50th anniversary. I was asked to illustrate a 1950s scene of their original bookstore along Azcarraga (now C.M.Recto Avenue) in Quiapo. I came up with the illustration above which took me around three weeks to finish. I don't remember the exact size of this acrylic on paper piece, but it must be around 14 X 9 inches. This illustration is just a reconstruction of sorts. I ...

Amirasolo and Other Essays                         Part 3. In my Book                                                    Essay 30. UNORIGINALITY IN ART Picasso's painting "Two Women Running on the Beach" inspired me to do the first painting in the photo album below, to which I originally gave the title, "A & E After Discovering the Joy of Sex". A and E are Adam and Eve. I asked a friend, a collector of my works, May Reyes, if the title is risque, and she answered that it is.  So, I re-titled this work "Candy Serpents", a title I thought innocuous enough, that now, I no longer fear being branded blasphemous by the Fundamentalists out there. The colorful line drawings of serpents on the other hand, were copies of the doodles done by my younger son, Karel Andrei, when he was eight years ol...

  Amirasolo and Other Essays                         Part 3. In my Book                                            Essay 29. THE POST-WARHOLITE BROTHERHOOD An art movement flourished in England at around the same time as when the Impressionists were starving and struggling to gain acceptance in Paris. The three founding members, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais called their group the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to emphasize their fascination with medieval themes and painting techniques prior to the advent of Raphael. The Pre-Raphaelites abhorred slapdash and bravura brushstrokes, and had a great success emulating the glazing technique and obsession with details of the quattrocento painters of the Flemish School. Although the Impressionists were considered more significant...

AMIRASOLO AND OTHER ESSAYS Part 3. In my Book                                      Essay 28. AN ILLUSTRATOR'S MANIFESTO (This manifesto was used as wall text for my 2007 solo exhibit of illustrations and paintings at the Crucible Gallery. The remark I made here about a few Picasso imitators as second-rate artists have raised the hackles of some who felt alluded to. Well, allow me to clear things up. I'm not referring to all Picasso imitators, nor to all modernist painters for that matter. The fellows I have in mind were those who haven't gone through the whole route of first learning the rudiments of realist drawing and painting before adopting abstraction or modernist figuration as their style. But there are exceptions to that "rule", of course. Because, once in a rare while, a genius who never went to art school would burst and break into the art scene, and amaze everyone there with his aes...