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...