The Evolution of My Abstraction

me back in 2006 preparing for my first solo exhibition in the Philippines

My painting is undergoing an almost complete overhaul. My rhythm and flow has not changed much, but my style and subject matter has seen some serious renovations. As a young artist in the Philippines, exhibiting solo for the first time in 2006, I introduced myself as an abstract painter heavily influenced by the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School in the 1960s. The likes of Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline (et al) taught me how to find myself on the canvas and to discover nature itself as it emerged from the process of automatic action-painting.

For the last four years I labored under this style of painting--exploring color and line in ways which transgressed the conventions of representational or figurative painting. The "freedom to express"--however vague this may be--was the intention itself. And the way in which I communicated this intention was to emphasize the subliminal power of our creative impulse in producing compositions that deny dictation and instead evolve organically--unhindered by aesthetic rules or structural blue prints. I use to say that the key challenge (and perhaps the only rule) to this process was the need to suspend criticism for as long as possible. The moment I stop to think about what I'm doing, is the exact moment that could bring doubt, uncertainty and instability to a piece of work. "Thinking" is anathema. "Doing" (and getting lost in the act of doing) is key to solving the mysteries of creation (breaking it down to its very core) and understanding the human condition. The act of painting is synonymous to the act of discovering.

A lot of this is changing for me. Not in the sense of denying one mutually exclusive path for the next, but in building up from a foundation that had already been laid. I have no doubt that abstraction will forever be at the very crux of what I do with my art. However, the abstraction at play in my work today lends itself to a slightly different set of organizing principles. It's early days still, but my work is moving into the realm of narrative drawing/painting. Quite simply: I am interested in telling a story.

This gradual shift is a fascinating one to me--and one which does not come without a huge set of challenges. I have moved into a world of imagery and illustration where my compositions can seem somewhat surreal, and yet, hold meaning through the ways in which the images are organized in relation to each other. I am still using the same techniques of automatic drawing, making sure that nothing is held back. In fact, making mistakes is still fundamental to the painting process.

The one crucial difference is that I am thinking about every step of the process, and the composition as a whole. My perception has grown to include not only what is in front of me, but the next three or four steps ahead of what I plan to lay down. It is unnerving, not because I am incapable of seeing beyond what is in front of me, but because I am in completely new territory. I am making the kinds of mistakes that I am not use to making.