I must be doing something wrong or perhaps it's the weather, but my paintings are taking too long to dry – a week to be exact. So as I wait for their surfaces to harden a bit more for me to work on the next layers, I have no recourse but to comtemplate on starting on a third canvas – that is, after bringing my dog Franco to the vet after he somehow managed to get at the rodent poison I left under a sofa some months back.
Three ampoules of vitamin K and a large intravenous dose of liver "tonic" as they call it did the job and my dog is back after a night at the vet, with his four paws still planted firmly on the ground.
I kind of need my dog when I paint. The smell of turpentine can get a bit overpowering at times and I often have to open up doors for ventilation. But that makes me feel vulnerable. Having my ol' dog around me while I paint makes me feel secure and I don't have to worry about imagined threats sneaking up on me from behind.
The painting "Tagos sa Yero..." is still wet and I still can't go about painting in the highlights for the hair, the shadows it makes on the face as well as a warming layer for the face in general. I can't wait to finish that work since that will be the first oil painting I will get to complete after...ack! 14 years!
While waiting for "Tagos..." to dry, I started working on the pool scene painting. Originally, I intended a close crop composition as inspired by a photograph I took while I was on a shoot at Puerto Galera. The photograph depicts a woman in a pool, dimly lit by submerged night lights. The scene was flooded by an eerie green cast.
But as I spent time sketching a viable composition, I was clearly not satisfied in mimicking a photograph, since doing so will fail to express a more pressing sensation that the photograph reminds me of everytime I look at it.
The combination of darkness and a large body of water evokes a primeval fear in me. I find it easy for my imagination to run off and conjure a creature of sorts lurking submerged in the darkness. Though it may sound rediculous in telling as we are dry and surrounded by light now, we cannot always hope to be bathed by light or held high above the cold lapping tongues of the ocean for the rest of our lives. When the time comes when all that we fear individually coalesce into a dreaded moment, fear cannot always be reigned in by logic or sensibility.
I've dove the ocean in the dead of the night. I've witnessed the ghostly form of a sunken ship emerge from the absolute darkness of the deep. I know how it feels to feel absolutely vulnerable...to succumb to a soft death and allow the cold hands of the ocean to caress your heart, submitting yourself to her whims, fancy and follies, whilst dark waves make their way towards shore 60 feet above you. I've known this kind of fear...it's sister to the fear I still get when faced by the prospect of entering any body of water at night. I just couldn't innoculate myself against it.
I wanted to show that intense moment between hesitation and that point when a person submits himself or herself to fate.
I've been trying to build this pool scene painting to depict this incomplete idea of what I would like to call "soft death". It's the sensation you get when you enter the cold ocean at night. It is what I've felt when I wake up half way at night and am trap in an unresponsive body while a whirling fantasy world engulfs me and rather than trying to wake up, I give myself up to oblivion. It is the same when you will yourself to stop caring and lean back into a cliff – to rapel. If you've ever imagined yourself dying, or even dreamt it, then you probably have an inkling of what I'm saying.
I've also began work on what I think will be a very technically challenging piece for me. I've been playing with the idea of painting a lady lying inside a "Kubol" – which is prison speak (Philippine) for a small space which an inmate can enjoy some privacy.
I saw the pose sometime in 1999 and I was so much taken aback by it that I came up with this drawing: "Kubol".
That was a long time ago and though I didn't paint then, I had some long term intentions to do a painting like that sometime in the future...which so happens to be this year.
Why such an angle? I don't know, but when I was learning photography in high school, I was very much impressed by Max Dupain's "Sunbather". I was never really satisfied with my "Sunbather" inspired photos of yesteryears, but I am excited about this present composition.
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