Three WOMEN REINVENT THEMSELVES

by Gino Dormiendo
Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 10, 2003

Debut exhibit

THEY are doubtless neophytes in a largely male-dominated field, but Deborah Del-Pan, Lily Avila-Wuzela and Teresita Mapua, in their debut exhibit, have achieved a feat in showing wide technical range and well-expressed sensibilities.

The three have likewise overcome the formidable age barrier, having crossed middle age, when it is perhaps deemed a bit too old to learn the rudiments of painting.

Having previously retired from their jobs (the first two taught at the International School), they enlisted the services of artist Renato Habulan, whose teaching style allowed all the freedom to express one’s fullness. The result of their one-year apprenticeship with the noted social realist is evident in their deep engagement with art-making.

The show, “Interiors, Expressions, Explosions” (Hiraya Gallery, until Mar. 28), is, indeed, a revelation insofar as the abundance of talents on display is concerned.

Del-Pan, who was born in Hawaii, paints her subjects in the manner of a modern realist, traversing the nuances, intervals and pauses, using symbols and icons that reveal the human soul. Painting in diptych and triptych modes of representation, she has created a suite of haunting images, real and imagined, that harks back to her Hawaiian forays when reality and fantasy merge and become one.

Intimately candid

The six works on exhibit reveal a rare sensibility that defies facile categorization, as the artist paints people, places and objects with intimate candor. In Within the Dream, a romantic arcadian sanctuary comes to life with a woman’s face peering through the maze of cascading waters and the panoply of exotic flora and fauna.

Moving into a more serious realm, Del-Pan paints Interior in triptych, and in the chiaroscuro mode that betrays her affinity to such painters as Jojo Legaspi, as shown by the angst-ridden faces of the figures. But Del-Pan is blessed with a female sensibility that is part whimsical, part gentle.

Avila-Wuzela indulges in child’s fantasies, irreverently deconstructing well-loved fables and myths. Her works are inhabited by pregnant virgins, cavorting angels and well-worn characters plucked from the canvases of European painters not to pay homage but to recast them into believable, down-to-earth figures.

The artist paints with vigorous, sweeping strokes that seem to explode on canvas. She casts a sharp, sensitive eye in delineating characters.

In I Am, she captures the formidable image of a huge red rose in the foreground, with the face of an angel gently peering through its petals. In The Awakening, the angel is in a state of deep contemplation while another creature in flight hovers above her, an allusion to the myth of Icarus.

Everyday objects

Teresita C. Mapua, working in a variety of mixed media, has the uncanny ability to transform everyday objects, including household gadgets and children’s toys, into things of beauty. Her works literally recast the iconic presence of forlorn religious figures, as in the Madonna of the Toys, where her reconfigured mother-and-child subject is jazzed up by a vast sea of plastic toys strewn all around.

Her most striking work is an assemblage called Madonna (Tribute to Caravaggio), where she cast the face of a demonic creature from mythology, adding braids of snake-like contraptions made of wooden rattlesnakes. Upon closer scrutiny, the venomous serpent heads reveal the poisons and toxins of the modern world-commonplace objects like miniature toy guns and tiny bottles of alcohol, condoms and consumer goods that have flooded the modern marketplace.

Mapua cleverly and ingeniously merges classical themes with more contemporary concerns, in the process debunking well-worn myths and reinterpreting them in a more contemporary light.

But what is truly remarkable is the highly assiduous approach she employs in her imagery, irreverently deconstructivist in spirit but conveying an essential sense of piety in her works.

In the maiden show by the three women, the lack of formal art training has proved to be more a blessing than a curse. By infusing a fresh, vibrant spirit to otherwise staid iconography, they have passed muster and admirably made their mark.

The art world would certainly be richer with the addition of these three bright names who have not only done their mentor proud, but have become inspiring role-models to all those who dream of a new beginning in the lifelong journey to artistic fulfillment.

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