Guhit salpak...

The first five on the Comandante commodity and the last for people of the book. Thanks for dropping by. On this month and year, Yla Luna was born.

NEW PAINTINGS

Just pull up yer socks. That’s right.

So what’s new?

A cluster of promises thrown to the air, a bit of token harrumphing and we’re back to the tunnel in between the stations of gallivanting and procrastinating. Down here, creeps rule and the signs surround you with advise to search for the big long roar, a change in air pressure signaling something massive hurtling along the rails, great lamps skimming sticky walls with halogen light.

Patti Scialfa’s alternating with Bonnie Raitt on the ears, and there’s the sound of perpetual dripping. If I had a Zippo, I’d slice the air with a click and make a small flame hum. But I don’t have one. So I’ll just settle for a few images captured on paper from recent times and days long past.

Thanks for dropping by.

Nowadays, I feel a certain disquiet if I go to a place – any place that is not my house – and forget to bring along my notepad and pen. Used to be that I could also not go out of town or out of the country without my small sketchpad or aquarelle paper and pencils and brush. There’s always a setting that’s asking to be painted, and people are the most interesting image to capture.

Amsterdam man on Keizersgracht, 2004. I painted this while on a bench, watching the man talking to someone on the street, near a bridge.








Old Figaro Café, Morato, 2004. The person was two tables away and looking out despondently.









Legs Study, 2004. Human legs are not objects by definition. They belong to someone, are limbs connected to a torso or a chattering mouth. Here, the legs belong to my good buddy Beau, a woman who also happens to be godmother to my daughter Luna.






Legs Study, 2004. I remember when I did the paintings Beau was helping other Greenpeace folks organize and tidy up things at the new Kamias office. The green firm had just moved to the big house then and people were busy moving cabinets, wiping shelves and so on. And of course I was goofing around and sketching and cheering people on. Not sure if Beau remembers.


Tirso Molina pedestrians, 2002.I had to paint this in a hurry, because the women were walking quite fast.









Recuerdos de Bilbao, bartender pouring sidra, 2002.This was painted in the Basque nation. I watched the bartender inject bubbles in the (very tasty) apple cider the natural way – from way up high, streaming down to a glass held very low. Magical.






Madrid bar, 2002.What is a Madrid bar without smoke and smokers. This was painted on a lazy afternoon, with whisky, just before the sun went down.








Late night, Celleno, Italy, 20021.After a grueling debate, a trip to the bar helped untangle the day’s thoughts, and helped re-tangle ideas much later. #

Redster's photo taken by the incomparable SpidrrrGrrl, July 2007.

MORE NEW PAINTINGS
Objects

I’m in love with certain objects. Parts of things, not the whole. Pieces. Portions. Tree trunks, for instance. Just the trunks, gnarly bark and smooth, with or without bark or fruit or whatever arboreal ornament. The trunk on the left is from the tree keeping watch over the grave of my grandfather, who passed away in 1999. He’s Lolo Ding also to my kids; great grandfather.


Kamias tree, Kamuning yard, 2008.Here’s the trunk of the Kamias tree in our yard. I think it’s the Olympic champion in Kamias fruit production. Never saw a Kamias tree as prolific as ours.






Detail from Rijks Museum tree, 2005.This is detail from a tree in the garden just before the Rijks Museum entrance in Amsterdam. I've used the tree's shade often, as the queue to enter the museum, if you line up a little late, can be quite long. It's a nice place to people-watch too.




Hong Kong tree, Victoria Park. This is detail from a tree trunk in Victoria Park in Hong Kong. I painted several portraits that day - which was incredibly humid - along with a couple of tree details.







Dutch bicycle, 2002. I used to stop and sit on benches to ogle at still bicycles in Amsterdam. Rusty handlebars, with rusty metal baskets. Heavy chain and clumsy rubber pedals. Angular bodies and wheels, flat tires, dented rim, unruly spokes. Bikes galore in Amsterdam. Keeps a stupid smile on my face and a constant urge to sit down and paint a bike.


Marrakech Olives, 2001. In Marrakech, I remember staring at stacks of olives, mountains of olives shiny and exploding with color and competing shapes. I had never seen so many olives - and so many different types of olives – until then. When I first saw the stacks, part of my brain was thinking of vermouth, and another part was playing with roast lamb.



Moroccan Olives, 2001. Huge olive piles adorned a part of the Jemaa al-Fna market square. I’d stare so intensely that the person tending the stall would either stare back at me rudely and wag his finger at me or, with eyes smiling, remark in Arabic to a customer casing the stall’s produce and gesture towards me. The shopkeeper was probably saying “Loco…” I suppose. And I was; I am.


Glasses, Tirso Molina bar, Madrid, 2002. My first time in Madrid was magical. The bar scene and pace of Madrid – a whole culture by itself. I remember going through seven bars in less than two hours, and then finding out after that we were just beginning getting ready for dinner.




Star Ferry, Hong Kong, 2004. Talk about icons. This one had me from the moment I set my eyes on the smoking vessel. I still have a series of around 20 with me. Many I’ve given away to friends.






Star Ferry, Hong Kong, 2004. When I was still working with Greenpeace China, and staying in Hong Kong for a few days, I used to buy sandwiches during winter so I can take my lunch aboard the Star Ferry, and I’d make two roundtrips sometimes, just to smell the salt and look at people and listen to the chatter melding with the gulls and swishing waters.


Detail from a bridge in Ubud. I took this in 2003 while in Bali, Indonesia. The bridge was made of stone and both its rails were coated with bright green moss. #

TWO PAINTINGS FROM JUNE

Getting under the skin

One day I'll go back full time to print-making, which is my first love. I've a few linoleum plates but I haven't found the time for years to roll some ink on them and set the images to paper. But I've not shed my great affection for sparse art -- the sketch, black and white renditions of what should be living color. I think there is nothing as powerful as the opulence of scarcity when it comes to paintings. Here I post two recent aquarelles. Thanks for dropping by.

















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MORE PAINTINGS BY RED

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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RED's ESSAYS
BEER from THE KAMUNING REPUBLIC
FAMILY FILES

THE WORLD TO KIDS

PAINTINGS BY RIO AND LUNA

The world to kids is a vast and different land, where geometry is fluid. Sounds can be painted here and colors can be heard or muted and shapes are curious things that make fun of all the silly rules governing the life of grown-ups.

Once upon a time, we were part of this tiny leaf, attached to a great fish dozing on stones balancing on the wing of a bug whose roots stretched and reached deep, deep down between the toes of two volcanoes exchanging paper planes across three oceans and four hiccups.



"One sun for every house" by Luna. Rio liked this best. He called it four sun world.










"Luna does Arturo Luz". "Mahirap ito Tatay," said Luna after she finished the pen and ink (on her brother's notebook hehe...)










"Chess ni Kuya" by Luna. My favorite.













"Banana and cookie in a basket para kay Yami" by Luna. The young girl's does still life. When I first saw it, I said "wow." This was her Christmas gift for my youngest sister.










"Four kids" by Rio








"Rio does Jackson Pollock's Telephone Poles"








"Level 1256" by Rio. Rio likes pencils and with the effect of faded graphite erasures.








"Ninja" by Rio. This is her favorite painting of all, said Luna.











"Experiment with a prehistoric man from somewhere" by Rio. I love this piece of his most. Rio said it's a little boy experimenting with the power of two stars and air circulation bubbles. Yep.