Friday, April 06, 2007

RECENT RED

LENTEN SCANNING
Sa wakas nakapag-scan din ng pintados

I tried selecting different "period pieces", paintings created in different places or mood swings when I always had aquarelle rectangles or postcard-size watercolor paper in my bag along with painting crayons and pencils and maybe a good sign-pen. I never left the house without my drawing gear, especially during work that took me outside the country. But for some reason I stopped doing this in the beginning of 2006 I think. I still wonder why..

I'm down to just small notebooks and a pen or two.

Anyway, here are some of the pieces I scanned yesterday.

Thanks for dropping by.




"Customer at Area Cafe, Megamall". I used to write in odd places and then I'd finish the day or the piece by painting.










"Gamu-gamo, Guni-guni". I have about nine or ten other pieces in this series. I think one day I woke up from a lush dream of insects and stories. Gamu-gamo is a tiny moth, and guni-guni is more or less a daydream. When I finished the last piece of the series, the bright fuzzy fluttering lights from the dream exited from my mind. Just like that.








"Vertical dream". I had a vertical dream. It was hard to understand. I still don't get it...









Woman from Suzhou". I painted this in Tong Li village in Suzhou, China three years ago. A woman was walking by, she paused for a few minutes to look over the bank and watched the canal waters flow by. I was sitting below her and reading a book and I remember it was a hot muggy day. Her face was so interesting I immediately had to take out my painting gear.









"Tsismis" series. There are maybe fifteen pieces of the series and the subject are men painted with one side of the face protruding and the ear straining to pick up a story or rumor. Men are more avid, neurotic gossipers than women. I kid you not.








Untitled. I think this was a portrait of an urchin I saw somewhere in 2003, but I'm not so sure.










"Fluid nudes" series. I like this series the most. Ever since I took up print-making in high school, I never lost my love of what to me are the basic colors -- black and white (which are non-colors Rio tells me; one is absence of color and the other is presence and all-color). Using water-based black on white creates a strong aesthetic quality which expresses the anatomy of a moment. I don't know why, can't explain it. It just is. I've received a couple of emails since 2004 to do nudes but I've never found the time. Maybe soon I'll take it up again. Why not.

Next batches later. Any thoughts? Drop me a note.

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