Tessa Mendoza: Grateful for second chances

The artist in Tessa Mendoza fully understands that the universe has given her some blessings that she thinks she does not deserve. These are graces that she least expects to receive, let alone favors that are not footnoted in her prayers. But these are graces that she celebrates with a thankful and humble heart.

Her painting exhibit titled Gracia, held recently at the Writers Bar of Raffles Makati, confirms not only a whirlwind of creativity that resides inside Tessa but also her central understanding of herself and the world around her.

In Gracia, she merges expressionism and impressionism on her canvases, giving birth to artworks that are momentarily tempered in spirituality. But the temporariness of her belief is always brushed away with bold strokes that command full-fledged faith — in herself, in The One who created her. Each of the 30 artworks Tessa recently exhibited is different, but one frame sacredly connects to the rest to display the proclivity of the artist in pronouncing that her talent is not solely hers. Tessa signs her name at the bottom of her artwork but the imprint of God is seen all over it.

“Gracia means grace of God,” she tells me as she nurses a glass of cold water at the Spectrum restaurant of Raffles. Her grip to the glass is firm, perhaps the same way she grips the blessings splayed her way. Her comely face smiles a lot, too, indicative of her happy spirit that also gives blessings to others.

“It’s all about being grateful for receiving something that you don’t deserve,” Tessa, in most part a self-taught artist, explains further the point of her artworks in acrylic. “I did not use my gift for 27 years. But God is so good he did not take away the gift.”

Her Assumption High School Batch ‘83 supported her in this exhibit. At the opening of Gracia, her equally beautiful and loving batch mates Monique Toda and Crickette Tantoco were present to gently hold Tessa’s hand in her first foray into exhibiting her art after almost three decades of being absent in the scene.    

Tessa first discovered her knack for the art when she was in grade school, the time when the back of her notebooks would be filled with her doodles and caricatures. She chuckles reminiscing that one time her teacher accused her of someone else doing her art homework.  

In 1986, she seriously picked up the brush and painted away with watercolor as her medium. She took a private workshop under the guidance of watercolor artist Jonah Salvosa. The following year, she mounted a back-to-back exhibit titled Nuances with Marivic Rufino, also a very talented student of Salvosa, at the InterContinental Makati.

In 1988, she got married and divorced herself from her art. Her being wife and mother to four children became her world in North Vancouver in Canada where she and her family settled in 2001.

The dormant artist in her awakened one day in 2007 and she picked up her brushes again to display her creative volatility, her imaginative temperament, her praises for the Creator who gave her the second chance again to be reunited with her first love — her art. “My children are already big (her eldest now is 26, youngest is 19), I told myself. It’s time to paint again,” she remembers her soliloquy with herself when she started her dalliances with the canvas again. Since then, she has nurtured back her love affair with her art. No one can stop her.

Her second wind has propelled her to become prolific; so creatively gifted Tessa is that she got accepted as an elected member of the hard-to-penetrate Société des Artistes Canadiens (SCA) and as an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists (FCA). Tessa is also a member of the North Vancouver Community Art Council.

In 2010, she returned to Manila. Four years later, she declared her complete love for her art. From that love, Gracia was born. The collective series in Gracia are artworks born between 2006 and the present. 

The series of figures in Gracia are women in full salutation of their being. Tessa’s paintings of figures burst with abundant bliss, playful mischief, elated solitude and joyful detachment (a characteristic I believe is drawn from her by her Assumption College education, where she took up Communication Arts).

Her women figures are confident but not overbearing. They are resplendent with emotions — giving, caring, even prancing merrily to the music of the wind. Prominently displayed is Woman Sitting, Tessa’s first “child” after she rekindled her love affair with her art. It shows a woman comfortably sitting on the earth, looking straight to infinity and beyond without reservation, confident that the complicated world around her will still be kind, generous, forgiving, humble in spirit despite the bounty it reaps. The Woman Sitting, just like all the figures in the series, is in gold (acrylic in gold leaf), indicative perhaps of a golden opportunity reaped by those who believe that in every nook and cranny is a mine of human happiness and spiritual joy. The Woman Sitting may be a self-portrait of Tessa for her talent and view of the world are golden.

“I am inspired by the luster and metaphysical attributes of Byzantine art and Gustav Klimt. My passion is reflected in my composition, which are more often than not, textured or aesthetically tactile at the very least,” she explains her style in her series of figures.

Her Kalikasan series is her ode to nature, her verse of worship to God for giving her the muse to hone further her gift to paint. In Winter Birch, Forest, Isla Gold, Let There Be Light among other Kalikasan series, Tessa seems to acknowledge that nature comes first to the world before man inhabits the earth. Her Isla Silver is an isle of paradise yet to be discovered. But it is best to remain hidden on the canvas of Tessa so it will not be desecrated. Her Black registers the imperfection of the supposed symbiotic relationship between man and nature. But even in darkness, as Black impresses upon me, a sliver of hope is seen. Soon light, perhaps the natural kind that kisses the canvas and heightens the color of the artwork, will take over. And it will be blissful again.

Tessa’s conspicuous faith in the Supreme Being is displayed in her series called Cathedral Glass. The series, she says, is inspired by her recent visit to Spain, particularly in Barcelona and Cuenca. An army of colors — like prayer flags — figures prominently in her Cathedral Glass series. Looking at any of the abstraction in the series is like genuflecting before God. Each canvas gives a serene feeling of belongingness to a world that is distant to the eyes yet close to the heart.

Tessa concludes, “Gracia is like celebrating my second chance at creating art. It’s like giving birth again.”

And what stunning and soulful art progenies she has produced with her God-given talent! 

(For your new beginnings, e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com.

I’m also on Twitter @bum_tenorio and Instagram @bumtenorio.

Have a blessed Sunday!)