Jana's artistry
When I met Jana de Asis Benitez in 1996 in Manhattan, New York, she was all of 10 years old. Her mother, Jo Anne de Asis Benitez, was excitedly showing me their new apartment on Park Avenue and when we got to Jana’s room, I noticed drawings on the wallpaper. The drawings showed a lot of talent but nevertheless, I thought it quite irreverent for a child to dirty the wallpaper. Her mother, Jo Anne, seemed unbothered by it and merely laughed it off, saying, “I have to change Jana’s wallpaper every so often because she loves to draw on it.”
She did right by not suppressing her daughter’s talent. Jana’s room was her domain and she unleashed her budding artistry by drawing and painting on her walls. Two years later, at age 12, Jana had her first successful exhibit at Ayala Museum in Makati.
Last May, Jana graduated from Brown University with magna cum laude honors. She was a Liberal Arts major in Fine Arts and Intellectual History. While a full-time student — and excelling in her studies — she held eight one-woman exhibits in New York and Manila. She has produced over 300 paintings, more than two-thirds of which have been exhibited and sold. Those who have been watching her art since she was 12 are astounded by the range of her talent.
During her last exhibit at her parents’ residence, I was mesmerized by her murals and her “Winter” series. Jana explained to me that in each phase of her evolving style, she would take time to exhaust an exploration in depth. In other words, when she sets out to do a theme, she delves into it with relentless determination. No one can dictate what she paints.
For example, when she began working on her murals, skeptics discouraged her by saying they would not fit in the apartments of her buyers. “But nothing could stop me from internalizing the new visual concerns and insights of a larger scale. So I went on doing my murals and they were a big hit! Most of them were sold.”
Although the murals are very similar in many aspects, each stands out as a unique work of art. Her technique (brave brushstrokes) is another factor that attracted me to her paintings. In Jana’s murals, I saw life’s spectrum and reached a deeper understanding of how all things are tied together.
Through abstract depictions of bodies and movements, she not only displays her mastery of the human form but, more importantly, she lets you feel the human spirit. This is most evident in her “Rites of Passage,” “Unidad,” and “Aspire.”
Abstract painter Gus Albor says of “Rhythm in Hues,” which he particularly admires, “One can feel the sense of freedom and liberty, figurative yet free-flowing and very sensitive.”
“Chiaria Nuria” is a stunning piece of her three nieces. It epitomizes the balance that Jana strikes between technical mastery and pure, youthful energy. She says of this piece, “The masters that inspire me always maintain wide-eyed wonder and a childlike spirit.”
Of the faces in her paintings, Jana says, “I have always been obsessed with faces. I am most intrigued by the uncanny possibility of a person gazing back at me from an inert canvas. How far can I go without losing the sense of a real presence breathing somewhere amid the paint?”
For her “Winter” series, she used only three colors — yellow ocher, black, and white. “I made sure that these paintings would bring both the figure and the backspace into a sort of tango — objects, faces and spaces meld, collide and complement each other, all with utmost grace.”
Subtle and sublime from afar, viewers are surprised to discover the texture and layering up close. My favorite in this series is “Anchor.” How fitting that Helena Z. Benitez chose this one because she was impressed by “a strong young woman holding steady amid strong winds and disparate forces.”
At age 23, Jana de Asis Benitez has obviously not yet reached her artistic peak. Her plan is to synthesize her recurring thematic and visual concerns more and more. Exciting, cutting-edge hybridism is what Jana watchers will be seeing in future exhibits.
This young woman’s talent certainly bears watching.
