Residue, December 2021
Phoenix
oil, pastel and collage on canvas
23 x 30 cm
2021
Creation
oil on canvas
23 x 30 cm
2021

Relics of my child II
Watercolour, pastels, acrylic and graphite on paper
56 x 76 cm
2021

Dancing dervish
Watercolour, oil and coloured pencil on paper
56 x 76 cm
2021

Birth stones on my island
Watercolour, acrylic and collage on paper
56 x 76 cm
2021

Dawn calling
Watercolour and oil on paper
56 x 76 cm
2021

With battered wings
Watercolour, graphite and charcoal on paper
221 x 151 cm
2021




Residue, December 2021
Artinformal Gallery, Manila
This year my artmaking functioned as a personal storytelling device: It was a way to commune with myself and map the emotional connections evoked by the changes happening around me; a way to take note of life’s details from the minutiae to the grandiose and to transform them into portals of an inner truth; a way to energise my intentions, quiet my disillusions and interrogate my fears. I’ve become particularly interested in art as therapy, looking back at the years I’ve leaned on my artmaking for nurture and spiritual flourishment. Creativity does not only serve the production of (beautiful) artefacts, but that of subjectivity and meaning. It reveals a way into the self that allows us to operate on a more authentic level of discourse as a response to the world around us. My drawings and paintings are the manifestation of this practice of transporting inwards. Together, the works for this show are bound like a journal that’s captured the emotional residue of the last year. It doesn’t present a linear narrative or timeline with a story arch from beginning to end. Instead, each work can be read as a moment in conversation with myself or multiple moments combined as one abstract picture. They are but emotionally charged fragments of an overarching personal narrative. The choice in medium gives way to different renderings of the same internal dialogue, so watercolour on paper will produce very different results from oil on canvas for instance. The works on display combine my approach of intuitive mark-making as an immediate form of expression with the more direct application of recognisable figures or symbols that represent motherhood, nature, prayer, psychic pain, growth and evolution. These universal themes could not escape me in 2021.