166. Notes on Celeste Lecaroz's Portraits: #5 One Artwork a Day

During the heyday of the Beatles, each Beatle - or so the legend says - wrote one song a day. These songs, a lot of which could be crap, became the source of the 275 original songs that the Beatles recorded and released. It's basic math. They improved the probability of getting a good song done by populating the pool from which it would be drawn. When Celeste started considering the shift from adult coloring to full artist, I told her about this trivia from the Beatles. I challenged her to be the Beatle of art, "Do it. One artwork a day. Start now." What followed was an adventure of sorts. She geared up for it -- colored pencils, colored pens, water color, pastel, acrylic paint, oil paint, and coffee stains.

 

"Wait a minute," I told her as she painted the beautiful face of the young Susan Roces using coffee stains, "Why are using my coffee?" She told me a little story about how she overheard a comment from detractors (everyone has them) that the reason why she colors well is because she has expensive materials. "To prove them wrong, I'm using the most accessible and cheapest material any artist can get." And the resulting figure is this wonderful monochromatic image of the once and future first lady of the Philippines. "Fine, I said. That's still counted as one artwork." So. Celeste does it everyday. Paint, eat, draw, sleep, color, eat, sketch, sleep -- it's the rhythm of one artwork a day.  Sometimes, she does them in advance. And she is "getting so much better all the time." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

164. Notes on Celeste Lecaroz's Portraits: #4 Communication of an Emotion

It was Leo Tolstoy who theorized that art is about the communication of an emotion. If the artist is able to convey the emotion that the artist felt when creating the artwork and the observer feels the same feeling upon viewing it, then the artwork is a success. Before Celeste painted the portrait of Fr. Jose Cruz, S. J., I told her of my one experience with the man.  It was my first day in Ateneo Law School, and the first part of the afternoon was a mass by Fr. Joe. My classmates and I came from various colleges, and we all had reasons why we wanted to become lawyers. Of course, most of us wanted the prestige and power of being a lawyer, especially an Ateneo-schooled lawyer who had a heyday in the post-Marcos legal landscape. We were going to be bar topnotchers, high profile corporate and litigation lawyers who would run the country in due time. We were going to be big shots. Fr. Joe gave us a general absolution before we started so all of us could receive communion. And then, when he gave the homily, he sounded differently. He began questioning our motivations to become lawyers,  berating us for our selfish goals, and asking us, "Is there a single drop of blood in your vein which is not motivated by an appetite?" I have never heard anyone ask that question before. He said it in this diction and voice characteristic of Ateneans of his era a la Raul Manglapuz. With this background, Celeste started her work on the portrait and when it was completed, I decided Tolstoy was right -- the success of an artwork is in the conveyance of the emotion. I see Celeste's Fr. Joe Cruz, S.J. and I reminded of what he asked that afternoon in Ateneo Law School, a question so profound yet so practical that it torments me everytime I think about it. It is a unique feeling. The man is looking at you, his eyes are piercing, he doesn't seem to be pleased nor pleasing, he's asking something, and you know he won't like your answer.  "Hey you,... big shot...is there. ..?"and I utter to myself, "I sure hope there is Father. I sure hope there is."





Celeste's Fr. Joe Cruz, S. J. and other iconic Ateneo teachers will be on exhibit at the Ateneo Alumni Art Fair from November 13-19, 2016. 

162. Notes on Celeste Lecaroz's Portraits: #3 They are not "portraits"

They are abstract art, she declares as I point out to her some lines of the face in her work which diverge from the reference.  To abstract from reality is to cut from the real world and paste it on the canvas. To expect that it is an exact graphic representation of reality is futile, because it is neither its intent (if it has an intent at all) or its means. Instead, this kind of art uses the language of colors, shapes, forms, and lines, which are pure abstractions. Thus, to appreciate Celeste's art, one has to expect the colors, strokes, lines, shapes, to speak louder than the image of the face, which does not have to be a perfect copy. But the face is central to her art. It is what makes the pieces accessible to the untrained eye, the shock of recognition that shows the subjects in colors which represent who they were, who they are, and who they would ever be. I read somewhere that it was a tongue in cheek blessing to tell someone,  "May you be painted by Picasso," as Picasso's paintings of faces have displaced eyes, ears, and nose. It takes a lot of education  to actually like a portrait by Picasso. But, it's abstract art -- just like a Celeste Lecaroz portrait, which a portrait it is not. 

161. Notes on Celeste Lecaroz's Portraits: 2. Spontaneous Realism

The first time I thought this project of large colorful canvas portraits by Celeste was worth a serious second look was when she painted Fr. Roque Ferriols, S. J., the well-loved professor of philosophy from Ateneo. The portrait captured that classic Fr. Roque stare who was my teacher back in the 90s. Known for his temper and tireless drive, coupled with his mastery of Plato, St. Augustine, and Teilhard de Chardin, he'd look at you at certain occasions as if saying, "I expect you to have done the right thing." which in those days meant studying and thinking; and you would melt, if you didn't. Yet, Celeste bathed Fr Roque's portrait in colored lights, and the effect is magical, if not, mystical. This is good art. What makes it so? It starts with this massive four feet by four feet canvas which is an imposing size for an artwork. It summons attention. Then, the under coloring on which the face is painted acts as the base where all the action happens.  The strokes, varied in size and twisting and turning here and there, seem isolated from one another at close range, and appear to be spontaneously assembled. But the mind assimilates these elements and recognizes the sum of all parts. Then, the seer notices the colors that seem to have no logical reference to reality save for shades and its values which are correponded with color.  But the mind is tricked into imagining that these colors are different lights beaming  at the subject. The effect is out of the ordinary. Of course, if you do this painting on some guy from the street, it might not have that same cathartic effect on the seer. But to someone who has known Fr. Roque Ferriols, S. J., especially during the crucial years of college education, this portrait is loaded with meaning. This is real as it can be -- Fr. Roque Ferriols, everything he has written and said, everything he stood and fought for -- in a beautiful picture. I told myself, I just gotta have this on my wall. 

160. Notes on Celeste Lecaroz's Portraits: #1. The Face

NVM Gonzalez used to talk a lot about how the diachronic and synchronic characteristics of language could be the key to finding an endless resource of inspiration. The diachronic is the historical and mythological dimension of words whereas the synchronic is the declarative words of the here and now. It was NVM's  "trade secret" that allowed him to write as much as he could, the mind and writing hand hopping from the historical and mythical to the here and now and soon he accumulated a treasure throve of authentic Filipino literature that made NVM a National Artist. In visual art, if one were to look for the same spring of inspiration, the human face is probably one of the most fertile grounds to mine. In the human face, one not only finds a story of a generation, a race, or the entire humanity, but also a representation of a specific person with a particular historicity, color, and uniqueness. Thus, the human face has the history and mythology and the here and now, the perfect cross between the diachronic and synchronic. Yet, the peculiar thing about the face is that it means nothing unless it refers to a specific face of a person. An artist may draw a face, and with a mastery of the anatomy, achieve perfect symmetries on the eyes, nose, and lips; but, it could hardly be relevant to any one, except probably to the student of medicine studying the human species. To work and make the subject teem with meaning, the face as a subject of an artwork, must be the face of someone -- perhaps a great man like the Pope; a hero of a war, like Antonio Luna; a comic artist, like Dolphy; a beautiful soul, like St. Theresa of Calcutta; a sports icon, like Kevin Garnett; or someone close to home, like your mother.