Three paintings that say, ‘I love you’

By Bettina Olmedo

ORDINARY GUYS SAY IT with flowers and chocolates. Writers say it

with love letters, while artists say it with paintings.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, many would agree that

artists decidedly have an edge when it comes to expressing those
three little words.

This will be illustrated in a major exhibition to be mounted by the

Cultural Center of the Philippines, Sept. 27-Nov. 8. This will be the first
posthumous retrospective show on Onib Olmedo, a major Filipino
figurative expressionist whose impact is felt even now. Filipino artists
of a whole new generation are self-confessed Olmedo disciples.

The exhibit will feature representative works produced by Olmedo

spanning his entire professional career from 1971 till his death in
1996. Included are paintings and sketches from the private collection
of Olmedo’s immediate family, some of which have never been
exhibited in this country, including what has come to be known as the
“Vienna Collection” and portraits of his widow and children which relate
a love story in the language of art.

Valentine’s Day portrait

It was the summer of 1967. I was then immersed in the whirlwind

world of advertising, writing copy designed to make consumers buy
what companies felt they needed and wanted, in accordance with
Pavlov’s hierarchy of human desires that fuel all of humankind’s
behavior.

The account executives were always impeccably attired in their

business suits, while the copywriters exuded their angst in outfits that
young people nowadays would describe as “cool.”

I found the AEs too stuffy and plastic, and the copywriters just
downright self-conscious and self-absorbed egotists. To my mind, not
one of them could be considered by nubile, fresh graduates like me as
“husband material.”
And then, one day, my friend, Fe Capellan, who was an AE but did not
have the mindset of this advertising specimen, invited me to their
family picnic at Hundred Islands in Pangasinan.

And it was at that time that I met the guy with whom I was destined to
share my life — Onib Olmedo.

What made him so attractive was the fact that he was the very
antithesis of all the people I was working with in advertising.

When we got married, he decided that he had had enough of the

structural discipline demanded by architecture, shifting gears in his
career path by becoming an artist.

However, he was not at all like the artists I had to collaborate with in
the commercial world of advertising. His was a quiet intensity and the
authenticity of a perfectly integrated human person.

The paintings he produced were not the pretty, ornamental stuff that
we had been superficially exposed to in our Humanities classes at St.
Theresa’s. In fact, they were all distorted and utterly disturbing, such
that Filipino art collectors would be puzzled, frightened and even
repelled by them.

This was in the swinging ’60s, when Filipinos had developed a taste
only for the vibrant and colorful images of Philippine genre art
depicting indigenous themes like town fiestas, planting and harvesting
rituals, religious festivals and the folklore of a people who are
perpetually smiling, although they may be weeping inside.

It was, therefore, with a certain amount of trepidation that I unveiled

the portrait he had painstakingly painted as a gift for our first
Valentine’s Day celebration as a couple.

To my surprise, what I saw was a portrait done in a purely realistic

style. In fact, he said he had based it on one of my black-and-white
photographs which he projected on the white wall of his studio for
enlargement.

All my artsy-fartsy friends tell me that I should hide this painting

because it is not at all representative of his style. I ignore their
comments, because I know that making an exception for his wife
through a realistic portrait that does not distort her features is a
figurative expressionist’s unique way of saying, “I love you”—
something which cannot be duplicated by the usual way of expressing
those three little words.

Daddy’s girl

Like this portrait, there were two others he produced as an expression

of love for the people who were nearest and dearest to his heart: our
two daughters.

Bambi, the older one, looks exactly like her father but is more like me
in terms of personality traits - exuberant, ebullient, caring but also
fiercely determined to stand up for her rights and convictions.

Franjo took after her father, being kind, gentle, compassionate and
generous to a fault. She was his alter ego. They were kindred spirits
who spoke the same language.

Of all the members of the huge Olmedo clan, Franjo is the only one
who really understands and appreciates her father’s art. The two of
them would spend hours discussing his paintings, the nuances of the
distorted floor tiles, the chair intertwined with a girl, the haunting
images on his canvas—with skeletal features and X-ray anatomies that
brought the viewer into the dark recesses of tormented human souls.

In stark contrast to these images is Onib’s portrait of her rendered in

ink. It captures the sweet innocence and the magical, albeit fleeting,
joys of adolescence. As in other signature Onib paintings, the eyes say
it all—they have a look of softness and tenderness.

In them are distilled the defining moments in a young girl’s life: the
exciting but intimidating prospects of unknown territory represented by
the first day in school; the jitters attending her first performance in a
class play and her first un-chaperoned date at the junior-senior prom;
the exhilaration of venturing into her first coed university after years of
a cloistered existence at a convent school.

The portrait exudes the shy but hopeful aura of youth looking into the
future which holds the distant promise of dreams fulfilled and
expectations realized.

The portrait evokes happy memories of funny moments and

momentous experiences—the way Onib would relate to his daughter
his own, unique version of nursery rhymes and fairy tales, changing
“Jack and the Beanstalk” to Jack and a can of Purefoods pork and
beans—a story that Franjo would adamantly adhere to, to the
consternation of her teacher; the day he followed in the family car as
Franjo drove off with her escort to the prom; the day he rejoiced at
Franjo’s decision to pursue a medical career, although he entailed
some yucky experiences, like opening the refrigerator and seeing the
carcass of a cat to be dissected in her anatomy class.

He didn’t live long enough to witness her graduation from medical

school and her recitation of the Hippocratic oath, but the portrait he
made of his daughter captures the triumph of a shy, young girl who
was never afraid to dream and to pursue her dream to fruition.

Her father’s daughter

The third portrait in the retrospective exhibit is that of Bambi, short for
Bambina, derived from Onib’s own nickname (Bambino).

Bambi is all sugar-and-spice in appearance, but she is iron-and-steel

when it comes to determination. A physical replica of her dad, she also
inherited his artistic genes. Her portrait in acrylic on canvas compels
the viewer with eyes that speak of her iron will and steely
determination.

Bambi’s character shines through the painting, evoking memories of

instances when she showed her tenacity. Although Onib allowed her to
take driving lessons, he prohibited her from driving the car when
nobody else was around. Bambi, however, stuck to her guns,
something which proved to be beneficial to the whole family whenever
a driver was not available, considering that her mom’s and sister’s
intelligence are not of the street-smart, spatial type.

In all her other endeavors, however, Onib was fully supportive of his
daughter. He would wait for his daughter during ballet sessions where
he himself would be exposed to demonstrations that showed the
intricacies of pliés and releves, pas de deux and arabesques.

These unexpected demo-lectures on ballet gave Onib a basic

backgrounder on the various ballet positions, which he would depict on
canvas but, of course, with his trademark distortions—without the fey
and dreamy quality of Degas’s impressionistic paintings.

The artistic bent Bambi inherited from her father was recently
illustrated in her first solo photo exhibit at Ayala Museum.
While her father expressed his world view by means of forms, colors
and figures on canvas, Bambi has chosen to project her perspective
through the silver lens. Her photographs illustrate her feel for
composition and her technical skills in what is considered the art form
of the digital era.

Viewers were one in saying that her photographs were perceptive images of the real
world, giving insights into the beauty all around us, escaping our notice because of our
jaded outlook.