Starstruck

When I was fourteen, I took art classes at the CAP Museum. The whole summer, my classmates and I tried our hand at drawing using charcoal and painting using oil. My art career did not flourish but that experience made me keenly interested in art. I could even say that it kindled my "love" for art but I'm not really sure if that word would be appropriate. I try to be very judicious in my use of the word "love" but that's another story.

There were several paintings at the CAP Museum but there was one work that struck me most. It was a large painting of sakada by Nunelucio Alvarado. The description beside the painting said that the artist was a "social realist" and he depicted the plight of the sakada even when Marcos was in power.

I no longer remember why his work impressed me then. Art is supposed to be an experience. There must have been something in the scowling square-jawed women with chunky arms that I identified with. Then again, maybe it was the fact that he was not afraid to paint the truth even with Marcos at the helm. This was 1989 and at that time, the memory of the brutality and repression of the Marcos regime was still fresh. It was not glossed over the way some people gloss over it now.

I would read about him and see his works in galleries when I was in college. I continued to admire his paintings. Last August, I caught his exhibit at the Kahayag Café. There were no scowling people in them but I was still impressed by his technique.

One lazy Friday afternoon, a friend and I decided to check out Turtle's Nest in Gorordo Avenue upon the recommendation of another friend. I had been asking everyone where I could find paintings by artists based in Cebu. In the past, I would visit the museum above the public library in Osmeña Boulevard but it is closed for renovation.

We saw two small mother and child paintings in Turtle's Nest. Even from afar, I knew it was by Alvarado. The women were not scowling though. We asked Ivan, the owner, if the paintings were for sale but he said that they were not.

A week later, Ivan called asking if we were still interested in buying Alvarado's works. I asked if we could meet with the artist and was very excited when he said that he could arrange it.

He did not look anything like the sakada that he painted. In fact, with his long white hair, fair skin and tisoy features, he looked more like an haciendero.

We talked about how he started painting (his father was a sign painter in Negros), where he studied (at La Consolacion College and the University of the Philippines in Diliman where he took up Fine Arts), his arrest for making "propaganda art" during Martial Law, and the sakada paintings (he called them "images behind images"). I asked him why people were missing in the works I saw in Kahayag Café. He explained that those works were part of his "Table Napkin Series". People, he said, were like napkins-beautiful to look at but still disposable.

He also showed us what he was currently working on: A series he called "Market Sin" depicting various scenes in a bustling market. The bolante (tabo where I'm from), he stated, showed "grassroots life" and was a living place as opposed to malls. This time, the stocky, square jawed people I identified with were in the pen and ink drawings.

As the cliché goes, a picture paints a thousand words. I was happy to learn that the artist I had admired for the longest time could talk about his ideas as well as he could paint them (and in less than a thousand words too).

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