Let us begin with one and travel very slowly traversing style and secrets...

Deborah Del-Pan is not so hidden anymore. Because her revelations run deep and subtle, lengthen the intervals between heartbeats and draw into the pauses that lie between. Sometimes that pause is everything… the slumbering rooms come alive, memory awakens and love is grown thick and deep. Born in the Hawaiian islands, Del-Pan has never lost the gentle quiet of those elongated days, crossing from innocence to innocence. The richness traverses like waves moving: can you hear them?

The Lily (Avila-Wuzela) is not white except in her clear desire to be herself and absolutely true. She dazzles and explodes like a child: pure, strong, uninhibited and incredibly generous. The fables linger in her mind: pregnant virgins, piercing eyes and angels. Avila-Wuzela will ever be entranced by art and from the “abundant well” of a life led with goodness, has drawn “a strong way of being a part of the universe.”

Teresita C. Mapua is both Apollo, who advocated the principal ideal of the Greeks: Know Thyself and Artemis, the hunter of truth and revelation. There is an uncanny balance in her work of soul and intellect. Her found objects ground her in the here and now. Taking full cognizance of herself, Mapua uses what is available, “letting process transform”; but ultimately, it is her long arduous search for God and self that allows her to surface and rightly say that in her art, it is “spirit creating.”

Accomplished social realist painter Renato Habulan is the man who brought these diverse voices together. His teaching reflects his advocacy: that one must have the freedom to express one’s fullness, what is inherent and true. The artist, who is best equipped to do this, must be both authentic and disciplined. He must labor in order to transform, be unafraid to enter his unexplored interior, explode all his fears and emerge with revelations to give. From this journey the human spirit finds both rebirth and sustenance, new life, new breath and courage. Indeed, Art is the key to the best in us.