Yasmin Almonte says she’s not much of a verbal person. But she is actually quite articulate with words. And you can’t help but notice the emotional intensity with which she speaks about her works.

On the fruit motif in “Metaphor”: “I was amazed with all the fruits they brought to class when we were doing still life paintings. There were peaches, plums, pears, apricots, oranges and apples. I had never seen fruits like those before. At home in the Philippines, on a good day, I would buy three apples and share them with my children or maybe I’d have the chance to buy a kilo of grapes. One Thursday, there was a large watermelon in class. On Friday, I went back and it was still there. It was just left there. I actually started seeing myself in that watermelon. I wanted so much to eat it. I felt it had so much to GIVE me. It could nourish me, give me strength, it was sweet and tasty and now it  was dying.

“I took it to my studio. I was gone for a weekend and when I came back on Monday, I saw its red juices on the floor. I saw blood. I thought, ‘What happened to this beautiful, delicious, sweet and ripe fruit? Where did it go?’ It was dead and I couldn’t stand its smell and it made a mess on the floor.

“I began to question my worth, my validity. I’m old already and I’m beyond physical beauty but my mind is young and I feel I have so much to give and to share.”

She talks of the painting Metaphor with a giant dying plum as a symbol for the dance of life. “The plum is changing quickly, it is shrivelling, darkening, rotting, it is hurrying toward death yet by dying it begins a new life.

“I too feel like I’m rushing and hurrying through a phase, I feel the need to work, to GIVE, to teach, to “die” in one way but to live again in another form.”

On standards of beauty: (while looking at her painting of a large woman, with large buttocks and a pear) “This shows a woman in the peak of her youth. I loved my model. She had big hips, huge breasts. I thought she was beautiful. She was the symbol of youth! Of someone who gave so much. She was so happy and jolly and free!

“Why do we fight nature so much? Who gives the rules and definitions of beauty? Why do we starve ourselves to be what we are really not? Why do we hide our ages? Why do we hide our big hips and large arms?

“Beauty and youth is not epidermal. It is beyond the physical. In every phase of life there is something beautiful.”

On being a woman and a painter: “I don’t know if I’m a feminist but I am a WOMAN and I speak from the heart.”

“Every woman is a priestess.”

“Woman are by nature beautiful and loving. And they want to be happy and to nurture those around them.”

“These paintings are my grasp of immortality. I hope it can touch lives long after I’m gone. If one woman who is suffering will see this and realize, ‘I am a nurturer, I am a royal priestess and I can do so many things because I am empowered’ then I will have my reward.”

“I have to paint” explains artist Yasmin Almonte. “If I don’t paint, I’ll probably die. I’ll be the most miserable person in the world. Painting is my way of communication because I wish I could speak well or I could write a book but I can’t—I don’t have the gift. I can only touch lives through my works.”

Indeed Yasmin is quite an artist. The first two words that come to mind upon beholding works from her third solo exhibit, “Metaphor,” at Hiraya Gallery are: Woman and Red. Each painting celebrates in no uncertain terms, being a woman—the struggles with identity, the heartache, pain, as well as the joy, the strength and even the triumph.

And yes, red, which is the principal color in most of her works, is the only color that can convey all this. Yasmin says, “Red is a very powerful color. If I were a color, I’d see myself as red. Red is blood, red is life, red is death, red is love, red is violence, red is passion. It’s a very universal color. It’s the very first color you see. It is the brightest, strongest color. No other color will do. “My whole mind is red.”

Yasmin graduated magna cum laude from the UP College of Fine Arts in 1991. In 1994, she was sent to the United States on a grant from the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. She was a full scholar at the University of Iowa where she took up art and painting and finished with flying colors (she practically aced all her subjects). She not only painted with such a fervor, she actually taught some classes, gave workshops and did performance art where she shared her Filipino culture, her language, her “prayers” and essentially, her entire being.

It was difficult for Yasmin to leave for the United States as she says there were people around her who questioned her and who doubted she could do it. But what really pained her was that she had to leave her children (who were in their teens). It was a sacrifice, she says, but one that paid off in the end. “I did it for myself but I also did it for them.” It was in the United States where she painted the works for “Metamorphosis.”

With her 3.92 average and the success of “Metaphor,” she was able to prove to herself, to the people she loved and to those who didn’t believe in her that she could make it—because she had the talent and the passion to do so.

“Gusto kong gumawa ng tatlong hakbang pero may humihila sa akin ng apat paatras.”  She adds. “I’m putting in a lot of boxes. Definitely of what a woman has to be, of what people expect me to be and to do. We are  judged by the world but I want to go beyond those boxes.” These are the sentiments she expresses in the first two paintings of the series. She encourages women to crawl out of the boxes they are placed in and to go beyond superficial limitations: “Women can achieve whatever they set their minds and hearts on.

“I want to see, to touch, to feel, be happy, to be what I truly want to be but it does take a lot of courage, determination—and a vision.

I think she speaks for all women—or perhaps every “real person” regardless of gender when she says, I want to tell the world many things, I want to love and I want to be loved, I want to reach out and I want to be touched. I want DESPERATELY to be understood and I want to understand.”

Also read:

"Persephone's Return" by Joseph Badelles

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