A 1991 fine arts graduate, magna cum laude, of the University of the Philippines, Yasmin Almonte had her first individual show in 1992, at the Hiraya Gallery, with I See Red. This was followed, two years later, by Looking Back, also at Hiraya. Both public, if often recondite, outpourings of her private angst, all done in oil, her preferred medium, highlighted her bold, dramatic use of color in delving into highly emotional themes. They also conveyed her self-assurance in rendering her subject in whichever form, realistic or abstract, her image of it dictated.

In late 1994, Almonte left for the United States on a travel grant from the National Commission on Culture and the Arts to pursue her masteral studies. In August of the same year, she was admitted as a full scholar in the graduate program in art, major in painting, of the University of Northern Iowa, in the US Midwest. She finsihed with flying colors in May 1996, dominating the academic scene by earning "A's" in virtually every class of her masteral program.

As in her previous works, the latest ones she presented in Metaphors, her homecoming exhibit at Hiraya in 1997, showed that she can opt for realism or abstraction to express herself imaginatively, the two art forms being, to her, "truly brother and sister".

"The strokes will fall and the colors wil be laid out, the subject matter will be defined and an image will emerge, an image of my soul," Almonte waxed poetic over it.

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