Amirasolo

AMIRASOLO AND OTHER ESSAYS       

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

Preface

"All men who have accomplished anything worthwhile should set down the story of their lives with their own hands. But they should wait before undertaking so delicate an enterprise until they have passed the age of forty."

The quotation above was what Benvenuto Cellini, the renowned Italian goldsmith and sculptor and contemporary of Michelangelo, wrote in the opening chapter of his autobiography.

Well, I'm now sixty-three and I supposed it's high time for me to write mine. My artistic achievements, I know, cannot equal those of Cellini and other notable foreign artists past and present, nor even of dozens upon dozens of Filipino artists active today and in the past. 

But no matter. There is no tragedy more tragic for an artist than to die and afterwards be forgotten for good. Leaving a mark is what art making is all about. Artworks---visual, literary, musical, etc.---are the footprints artists leave on this Earth. They are proofs, enduring proofs, that they, once upon a time, existed.

Part 1. Tondo on my mind

Essay 1. AMIRASOLO

I was called Amirasolo by my UST High School classmate Paterno Mendoza. Fernando Amorsolo is the most popular painter in the Philippines at that time, and perhaps even up to today---the one most known to the public, art-lovers and non-art lovers alike. I don't recall exactly what prompted Pat to call me Amirasolo, but I guess it was because he wanted to get on my good side. He was perhaps flattering me because he had an art project to do and submit and he wanted me to do it for him.

Not one to turn down a request 'laced' with praise, I'm sure I readily did it for him. Anyway, he was not the only classmate who'd requested me that. There were several. I only remember Pat because of that memorable utterance of his, which I confess truly flattered me.

I remember another classmate, Reynaldo Catiis, who cajoled me to draw Batman in my notebook. We were in grade four then at Holy Child Catholic School. No problem with his request. But the trouble was he made that while we were seated at front row, and at a time when our teacher Miss Lolita Flores had already began her lecture. But being a bit of a show-off that I was who can't resist an opportunity to display my talent, I readily gave in to Rey's request.

Miss Flores, of course, noticed what we're up to. She asked for my notebook and when she saw my Batman drawing there, she frowned and shook her head. She ordered me to ask my mother to sign it to let her know what I'm busy with while a class was in progress. I was afraid of the scolding I'll get, so, I just signed the drawing myself with my mother's signature.

Miss Flores readily saw my attempt at forgery. She asked me to go outside the classroom, and while we were there, she pulled my right 'patilya' upwards saying, "Ang bata-bata mo pa, sinungaling ka na." ("So young, and you're a liar already.")

Drawing was a compulsion since my early childhood. My earliest memory of being fascinated by an artwork was when I saw a pen and ink cartoon by Jose Rizal in an old Reading textbook. That cartoon was of the monkey and the tortoise. I haven't entered school at that time, and I remember myself afterwards trying to do a similar drawing which was still beyond me. The drawings I religiously did with a measure of competence, though still in a childish way, were images of fire engines with firemen on board and war jeeps.

My artistic talent was discovered when I was in grade one. Our teacher, Miss Mercy Ramos, asked us her pupils to draw, as our art project, an animal on a whole sheet of cartolina. I drew a blue bird. Miss Ramos was impressed. She couldn't believe that a boy so young could draw a bird so convincingly. I was sent with my drawing to the office of the Assistant Principal, Mrs. Manuel, to receive encouraging words and praise, which were given me. I was told to "Keep it up."---which were words of high praise to a boy of seven like me.

It was in the class of our art and workshop teacher and scoutmaster Mr. Joe that my artistic skill was thoroughly honed. I learned from him the basics of perspective and isometric drawings, which were being taught us boys to prepare us for an engineering or architecture course in college. We were also trained in woodworking, especially in the use of coping saw. Other crafts-projects taught us were parol (Christmas lantern)-making, the fashioning of flower vases and ladles using bamboo and coconut shells, and even  soap carving!

But I wasn't interested in those. I'm only interested in drawing---not the technical kind of drawing, but fine art drawing. So, what excited me most was the album we were required to compile of colored pencil drawings of different flowers, fruits, trees, fishes, and mammals.

For our final artwork, we were allowed to choose the subject matter and the medium we'll use. I chose to copy an image of Christ the King and used watercolor to paint it. Although it was my first time to use watercolor in painting a subject as complicated as Christ the King, I believe I painted a convincing likeness of the image because the grade I got for it was 99%, which Mr. Joe said was the highest grade he gives.

It would've been great if I still have that album for me to show around. But unfortunately, it was lost in a fire that burned down our neighborhood in April 1969, just a month after our graduation from grade seven. That was tragic---losing a year-long effort for good in just a few hours.

Another teacher, Sir Benjamin Roda, kind of pushed me towards really learning how to paint in oil. He was our English Literature teacher at USTHS, a brilliant one I must say, my favorite. Sir Benjie is also an art enthusiast, who, I presume, was into art making part time during  his years as a teacher. It was from him that I bought my first Grumbacher how-to-paint book from which I learned the rudiments of oil painting.

Sir Benjie asked me one time to do a visual depiction of a stanza from Thomas Gray's poem, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". What I did was a painting of an ox-drawn cart on a country road which leads towards a church. Although I used watercolor in tubes in making that painting, I applied the colors using oil painting techniques, that is I applied them opaque and in thick impastos. A mistake. I should've done the painting using the traditional wash or transparent method, because watercolor will definitely flake off if applied thick.

My mother bought me my first oil paint set when I was thirteen. Before that, the coloring tools I used were crayons, colored pencils, and watercolors. I can't wait to try those tubes of oil paints that I hastened forthwith, without thinking, and by force of habit, to thin the paint with water, to no avail of course. I realized my mistake when I saw that the water won't dissolve the paint. Because it was oil paint, I concluded rather lately that what I need to thin the paint was oil. So, I got what was at hand and used edible oil which thinned the paint all right. Never mind the durability issue---I didn't know yet what linseed oil is.

We have a new house then, the one that replaced the burnt one. This new house had a room, a small third storey room from which I can slip easily into the second storey roof. It was on this roof that I did my first oil painting which I painted directly on raw plywood (without latex or gesso primer). My subject matter, the mountains of Bataan which can be seen beyond Manila Bay from the roof.

When I was young, I never dreamt of becoming a professional painter of easel-sized works. My ambition then was to be a painter of 'cartelon' or giant movie posters or billboards. A relative of my father, Noy Mancio, was the one who encouraged me to aspire to become a cartelon painter. Noy Mancio was movie star Fernando Poe jr.'s personal driver. He promised that he'll introduce me to Mr. Poe the moment I am ready to do professional painting jobs. The idea was for me to work directly for him as cartelon painter for his movies.

That dream was boosted further when I was in high school. The Marikina and Antipolo-bound bus I used to take in going to UST High School regularly passed by the Sagmit Advertising Studio at the corner of Antonio Rivera and Bambang Streets in Tondo. I could see from the window of the bus the giant white cloths stretched on giant wood frames, and the painters all busy working on the billboards which were in varying degrees of completion.

I used to think to myself how marvelously skilled those cartelon painters were. I marveled at how easy it was for them to copy pictures magnified dozens of times over when I had the most difficulty doing portraits which were just life-sized.

My dream of becoming a painter of giant cartelons didn't come true. I was 'reduced' instead to being an illustrator of textbooks and picture books, for which I did early in my career illustrations that were almost miniaturist in scale.

Also, I never became a disciple of Amorsolo. My painting style is in no way similar to his. Idyllic rural landscapes, likewise, were not for me. And I'm not really good in portraiture for which Amorsolo is considered as one of if not its best practitioner. My brushwork too---with its smooth luminist quality or absence of visible brushworks and impasto---is the polar opposite of Amorsolo's looser bravura strokes, a style so dear to the magnificent Cebuano masters like Romulo Galicano and Orley Ypon.

Needless to say, Amorsolo doesn't top my list of great Filipino painters. Botong Francisco does. But Amorsolo is a close second.