5 women’s passionate love of painting
Way back in 2013, I attended a show at the Altro Mondo Gallery that fascinated me: a group of five women artists, namely Rosario Bitanga, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Lenore RS Lim, Susan Fetalvero Roces and Marivic Rufino. Deanna Ongpin-Recto, the first curator, christened their show “Appassionata.”
To my mind, it was a catchy title, an Italian word meaning passionate and deeply emotional. The word captured the essence of someone who, besides being a woman, also happens to be an artist. And if there’s any activity where passion is required, it is painting or artmaking.
Whether it’s singing, dancing, acting or anything related to self-expression, passion must predominate—the emotion that must unleash the talent and technique possessed by the person.
Despite Bitanga’s recent death, the group has remained steadfast in its commitment to her art. This is evident in its third iteration, “Appassionata III,” which features Bitanga’s recent works, ensuring that her artistic legacy lives on.
Rosario Bitanga
A pioneer of Philippine abstraction, Bitanga studied at the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art, the same institution where, in succession, National Artist Jose Joya and Anita Magsaysay Ho also did postgraduate work. She gained recognition for her iconic painting “Coda,” which catalyzed her creativity. Over the decades, Bitanga has sustained the dynamic interplay of colliding planes and masses in various mediums, from painting to printmaking to sculpture.
Like other artists influenced by music, Bitanga pays homage to the Russian composer in her “Tchaikovsky Series.” Undeterred by the illness and frailty of old age, she viewed and executed her final works with an elemental simplicity and profound dignity. In monochromes of blues and shy, luminous yellows juxtaposed lyrically, the musical series gently dematerializes her trademark masses, giving way to an open, breathing exhalation of space.
In the end, Bitanga was an artist with all her keen aesthetic senses about her.
Imelda Cajipe Endaya
It’s common to associate wearing many hats with men rather than women. Nonetheless, we best describe Endaya as a hyphenated achiever in the arts: a painter, printmaker, installation artist, curator, art historian, social commentariat, activist, proponent of feminist causes and founding editor of Pananaw: Philippine Journal of Visual Arts.
Her deeply introspective views on identity, feminism and the plight of Filipino migrants and domestic workers emerge through the prism of her art. A critical thinker, she brings her art beyond the formalism of contemporary art, for she is adventurous in her choice of materials often associated with domesticity and womanly chores.
Indeed, she channels her persona through her work, as seen in her recent textile collage series, “Biyaheng Sansinukob.” An embroidery work reflecting on the afterlife is an intimate glimpse into Everyman’s ultimate destination.
Lenore RS Lim
Lim, a Filipino Canadian American artist, is a one-woman renaissance in printmaking. The National Museum featured her as an artist during National Women’s Month last March, where her solo show “Leaves, Lace, and Legacy” showcased her mastery of printmaking techniques.
Despite being based in Canada, she has progressed in the graphic arts in the country, which she regularly visits to participate in group exhibitions.
Her contributions to the “Appassionata III” show range from traditional etching and serigraph to computer-generated designs, combining these densely layered mediums. She has a remarkable eye for composition, blending her favorite images of leaves and native lacework into her colors’ thriving and darkly rich tones.
Marivic Rufino
The artist’s paintbrush is a most sensitive instrument. With its direct and unfiltered emanation of the artist’s hand, from fingers to wrist, it can capture, like an emotional Geiger counter, the vibrations of the artist’s mood and intent at the moment of creation.
In the watercolors of Rufino, there is an absolute absence of tension and anxiety. In their place, the viewer senses and perceives the quiet and serene evocation of Oriental calligraphy, no matter whether the subject is something symbolic, like a horse, or abstract, like a time of day.
Her equine creation is a dreamy Chagall-esque horse prancing in mid-air. At the same time, her sunsets, as in “Atardecer,” are an intense and understated beauty of red, orange and yellow strokes evanescing into dusk. In equal measure, her “Field of Dreams” is all flourish, all emotional nuance of translucent greens gliding down in fathomless space.Rufino’s paintbrush perfectly reflects the artist’s stoic calm and serenity.
Susan Fetalvero Roces
The dugong, a marine mammal, is on the verge of extinction. With a long humanlike lifespan of 70 years and slow reproduction, it may not be long before we see its complete disappearance from our seas. This grim and lamentable situation inspired Roces to share her art as an instrument to express her outrage. Rather than the conventional canvas, she used the more symbolic fishermen’s paddle.
On this innovative surface, Roces painted images evocative of the sea: waves, bubbles and pebbles. Titled “Viajes de Vida,” the paddles allude to the journey of life and, to this viewer, the prehistoric manunggul jar, the most impressive piece of ancient pottery in the Philippines. At the top handle of its lid are two boatmen, representing souls, rowing and paddling toward the afterlife.
Roces’ other works are glorious, with filigreed foliage, blossoms, petals and leaves rained down with quivering threads. The high-density colors—purples, magentas, fire tree oranges, fuchsia pinks and rosy reds—shine in ceremonial splendor, as evidenced in “Ode to Babaylan.” Roces is a resolutely romantic artist.
“Appassionata III” runs Sept. 4 to Sept. 15 at Leon Gallery International, G/F Corinthian Plaza, Paseo de Roxas Avenue, corner Gamboa St., Legaspi Village, Makati City.
