Unlike other figure painters, this artist uses models from the third dimension.
Nonbelievers call it hallucination or whimsy, but psychic painter Jhonamar Salvosa is convinced that he is experiencing makyo?a condition wherein negative and positive forces of nature crowd the mind, creating ideas that play like cerebral movie clips.
?I felt like I was entering hell, paradise, or the unknown,? he said. ?I met angels, fairies, giants, dwarves, a snake, a rich person, a beggar, and even God. To detoxify myself from these thoughts, my Zen teacher told me to put them on canvas.?
As a result of his brush with the third kind, Salvosa has completed 24 surreal paintings that formed his 21st one-man exhibit titled, ?Bighani? recently on display at C3 Events Place, North Greenhills.
?I know it?s shallow to think about playing with fairies, but there are a lot of things to learn from this experience. Not only colors, lines, forms, or composition, but everything else beneath all these,? he said.
From makyo to macro
From unfinished fragments of thought in his head, Salvosa was able to magnify his musings on print using acrylic and watercolor.
?Makyo is a sign that the person is near enlightenment,? said the artist who took studies about Zen. ?During meditation, I encounter a lot of things. I don?t know if they?re subconscious or imagined. My Zen instructor told me to put on canvas the things that always bother or block my path during meditation. And true enough, whenever I do so, the disturbing visions just suddenly fade away.?
This experience enabled Salvosa to explore fairies that fly, swirl, and dance like humans in his settings.
?It?s like magic,? he said. ?Fairies keep on appearing in my subconscious that made me paint figures obsessively. My hand was spontaneously going around the canvas, as if it already follows its own direction. When I already have finished the artwork, it is only then that I notice how different my masterpiece is from the previous ones I have done.?
As magically as he had painted them, so do how enchanted Salvosa?s magna opera look like on frame.
His artworks titled Ligaw sa Gateless Gate, Paramdam, and Lumang Lagusan are dreamy and childish yet mysterious. Meanwhile, he explored the extremes of human emotions and used them on his supernatural models in Tawag sa Loobin, Pagkamoot, and Hinagpis. He likewise flirted with immortality in Walang Hanggan, and sneaked at the past through the eyes of a dragonfly in his favorite masterwork, Gunita sa Nakaraan.
But of all his paintings in the exhibit, Abibas Dwendes is the one that gave him the oddest experience.
?It was like the elves on the artwork are playing on me,? he reckoned. ?For half a month, I am struggling to finish the painting but could not do so no matter how I tried. The colors of the dwarves? clothes were always changing. A bad feeling overtakes me whenever I sit down to work on the painting.?
Again, his Zen master came into the picture to save the day.
?My guru asked me not to use incense because this angers the spirits. I also offered sweets because elves love these,? he explained. ?After such, I was able to work smoothly and finish the artwork. When I went to the bookstore, it?s like the elves coerced me to buy glitters, which I added on the painting.?
After finishing the portrait, his Abibas Dwendes found a suitable sanctuary?in the cover of psychic Jaime Licauco?s book on elves.
Don Quixote de Camarines Norte
Painting figures is not new to Salvosa, a seasoned artist from Camarines Norte who wears the laurel of being one of the province?s 100 outstanding personalities in 1999 for his outstanding achievement in the field of Fine Arts.
From hand painting clothes for designer Pitoy Moreno during his college years, he toppled over 500 local contenders in the ?First Filipino Saint? Art Competition two years after graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. He majored in painting.
The distinction did not only send him to Rome for free; his St. Lorenzo Ruiz artwork was also included in the Pope John Paul II collection of the Vatican Museum in Rome?alongside the masterpiece of his idol Michelangelo.
Besides sharing a space in the Vatican with his admired classical painter, Salvosa said he also shared with them the experience of seeing visions.
?Before Michelangelo finished The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, he first saw it in a vision,? he noted.
His mental pictures led him to his first exhibit on fairies and human anatomy titled, Ode to Beauty.
As he narrated: ?I started my Diwata series during my Ode to Beauty show in 1980, but this was interrupted with other inspirations.?
For 22 years, Salvosa has participated in over 60 group shows and eight international exhibits including the Grand Prix International in France and the Cairo Group Exhibition in Egypt. He delved on subjects like ecology, social realism, Zen, and nature, made study trips in 17 countries, and along the way, bagged distinctions such as being one of the Top Five Watercolorists in the 19th Kulay sa Tubig Annual Watercolor Competition. Furthermore, he has been invited to judge the Shell National Student Art Competition twice, and has sold his mural paintings and sculptures to prestigious establishments like the Mandarin Hotel in Makati City, Hyatt Regency Hotel in Pasay, and Barrio Fiesta Restaurants in Los Angeles, USA.
?Some artists, my age are already stagnant,? he remarked. ?But me, I?m getting more excited. I have a pacing as an artist; and I?m moving toward retracing my first passion?human form and figures?natural or mystical.?
Unlike other figure artists, Salvosa said he explores difficult angles, as evident in his painting of women who mostly face the side view. In contrast to others, he said his trademark images are lean and elongated, while his colors, subtle and ethereal. He is also fond of doing what he termed as pagbabasbas?or splattering a spectrum of colors on figures with dark or neutral tones.
?It?s fun to play with the lines of the human form,? he said. ?In the past, I used to neglect this. I used to draw just for the sake of finishing an artwork. But now, I?m getting more excited about painting because I discover more unique colors and techniques. I?m becoming more fascinated with curves and lines?it?s like there?s magic.?
Even if he is dealing with a new experience, Salvosa?s charm for his previous subjects? ecology, social realism, Zen, and nature?are still embedded in his latest anthology.
Some of his fairies dabble as Mother Nature, to the delight of environmentalists. Others have Filipina or Asian features?very folkloric and nationalistic in ambiance. Some, still, are melancholic, while others, serene and musical. Some are dark; but others are animated and Manga-like: captivating for this generation of fantasy-jaded spectators.
Even if he were into sculpturing these days and is yet to unveil his collection of carvings in August, surely, this master painter would not rest his brush.
?There are a lot of miracles happening when I paint,? he said. ?I don?t know if the fairies are playing on me, wanting me to feel their presence, pleading me to paint them, or simply wanting to tell me something. It?s like I?m transported into a new dimension.?
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?pag ... uly15_2006
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