SPIRIT OF PLACE

All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.”
(William Shakespeare from King Richard II)

“The longer I live as an artist, the more paintings I paint and the more drawings I draw, the wiser I become in understanding the whys and the wherefroms of my creations. Because that is what they are, the creations: idiosyncratic daubs and scratches bursting out of an engorged brain, the effluence of a thick soup composed of memory, observation and emotion. The artist-creator’s hand is merely the conduit out of which flows the river of her life’s passions and affections, hates and afflictions, joys and heartbreaks.” Phyllis description of her coming exhibit at Ricco Renzo Galleries.

Each exhibit carries fragments of these emotions in the paintings which are shown. The artist leave it to the viewer to parse the language and decipher the icons. But that is hardly a chore since the pictures have become so increasingly descriptive as Phyllis age that inevitably the delicious mystery and cool reticence of abstraction are now things of the past.

The title is “Spirit of Place”. It is a simple title, plain and unaffected. The places the artist paint are locations which are laden with meaning for her; landscapes which are unforgettable for their natural beauty and houses whose timbers are so impregnated by the spirit of their inhabitants as to have acquired like personalities. They bear silent witness to the very existence of a Filipino people.

Before long , heritage houses and bucolic landscapes will be history, “gone too soon”, fallen prey to greedy developers, impoverished owners and government neglect. They will be preserved only in our finite memories, or snapped digitally with cold precision. But also perhaps they will be lovingly caressed by the old-fashioned brush of a sentimental artist. Tragically, some facades in old Manila were demolished even as the was painting them in her studio. It was Art doubling as the obituary of a vanishing era.

Another “Spirit of Place “ hovering over this show comes from Cannes , a resort town by the sea in the South of France. There, in 1957, Pablo Picasso lived in a villa called La Californie. His large studio window overlooked the blue waters of the Mediterranean and on its ledges and balconies he tended up to forty of his pet “Pichones”, both rare and ordinary breeds of pigeons and doves, among which were the two white fluffy Chinese birds given to him by his beloved rival,Henri Matisse ,who lived nearby. For a short period of a few months in September and October he took a break from working on his monumental series, “Las Meninas”, with which he reinterpreted Diego Velasquez’s 1656 portrait of the Spanish royal family. By December of 1957 he had finished 58 of these interactions.

Picasso changed gears and focused on his personal world to ease the tension of revolutionary creation. He turned from doing battle with a masterpiece which had been revered for three centuries,to spontaneously describe the lively domestic scene framed by his window. You can tell that he was having fun. He christened the resulting 20-plus small oils on canvas “Los Pichones”.

“For more years than I can recall, in pilgrimage I have visited nine of these charming paintings in Barcelona’s Picasso Museum. This year I finally dared to dialogue with my idol in a parallel series of nine, employing an evolvingtechnique which painstakingly marries emulsion transfers to acrylic paint, topped by flourishes of gestural drawing. In cheeky homage to the Master, I have called them “Pichones, Pablo y Yo”, says Phyllis. “I can only pray that he does not mind. They were done, after all, with sincere admiration, in a true Spirit of Place.

Phyllis Zaballero exhibits at Ricco Renzo Galleries on 13 August 2009, Thursday 6:00pm. Exhibit runs till September 6, 2009. For information please call Kaye Nuguid at 0927-3244013 or 898-2545 or visit www.riccorenzo.com. Ricco Renzo is at 2nd Floor LRI Design Plaza, 210 Nicanor Garcia Street, Formerly Reposo, Bel Air II, Makati City.