Paintings for Free







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 elated of course, expectant of the windfall that will come my way in two weeks or so 

But I had no such luck. The painting wasn't bought. The woman didn't even have this reserved---that is, have it tagged with a green dot. Today, I suspect that maybe that woman was not really interested in buying this painting. Maybe, she just wanted me to get the hint, and volunteer to donate the painting myself to the President. Which I'll never do for two reasons. First, PNoy is a rich man and he can surely afford to buy this painting if he wants to. And second, we're not close---he's not even an acquaintance. I know of him but he doesn't know of me. I only give paintings to friends, long-time friends mostly, who've done me favors in the past. In short, I give paintings to reciprocate.

Another woman who was connected with a certain foundation once told me that artists should be grateful if they got invited to participate in a charity art exhibit and given part of the proceeds from sales. Well, I say that artists have all the right to get paid. It would be too much to ask of them to do the donating all by themselves, and give their paintings absolutely gratis to the organizers of a charity art exhibit. Painting is the painter's means of livelihood if he is not a mere dilettante. Proceeds from sales of his paintings put food on his table and paints on his palette. Not paying him in any way, therefore, would deprive him of those.

Asking professional artists to do an artwork for free is the height of insensitivity. It is an insult even, a presumption that an artist's talent, time, and effort were of little value. Offering exposure or free publicity as payment in lieu of cash exposes those who do so for the cheapskates they really are.

Years ago, there was a call for painters to do mural work inside Intramuros, if I remember correctly. There would have been a rush by artists to answer that call had there not been a catch. The catch was the artists won't be paid for their efforts. It was purely voluntary work where the payment presumably would be exposure and free publicity. I don't know if that gratis mural project pushed through, but I've never heard of it again.

Don't get me wrong, please. Artists can be civic minded too. They won't hesitate to donate an artwork or do art for free for truly worthy causes---like for example, Buds Convocars 'Art for Humanity' fund-raising campaign for the victims of Typhoon Yolanda. A plea to donate paintings to raise funds for a cancer-stricken fine arts schoolmate was also made. Both calls were successful as artists, including myself, gave artworks with alacrity. And then, there was Dr. Joven Cuanang's 'Flores Para Los Muertos' mural project on the east wall of the North Cemetery in which hundreds of enthusiastic painter volunteers participated.

You can see from the projects I cited above that artists are not that stingy. They are in fact inherently generous. All the promoters have to do to persuade artists' to perform volunteer work is to be forthright and state the commendable objective of the project without adding as supposed sweetener those crappy overused words, 'exposure and free publicity'. No need for them to take on the job of  publicizing what we artists do. We can do that without their help. If we want to flaunt our art, what we'll do is just flood facebook and other social media with our works.


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