Tree? I am no tree.

So this year I was extremely lucky they let me join the InK exhibit ~ this year's theme was 'coming of age' x becoming a young adult. So I made a tree ^^; I've made trees before, but this time I wanted to make a sapling ~ I had meant to only just make the sapling but Mom told me to put some seedlings, too. And Rhea said for me to put a background ^^; So this is what came out ^^; 

You know I rather miss doing straight up watercolours; the last time I did seemed like it was so very long ago ~ in the back of my head while I was working on this one I was still doing acrylic, meow...

Oh and I made exhibit notes for this show ^^; Here they are:

BRAVE NEW WORLD

You’re reluctant to let go, but you can’t wait to see what’s on the other side. You feel unsettled, even frightened, but excited, just the same. Either way, there’s no turning back.

The transition from childhood to young adulthood is different for everyone. Some of us experience it relatively early while others are late bloomers. Some of us embrace it, and look forward to becoming a full-fledged grown up; others of us hang on to our bears and blankets for as long as possible.

Yet this is a journey everyone must go on—ready or not, here we come! And we are forced to go out in search of our older, more mature selves.

It’s uncharted territory as far as we, as ‘tweenagers’ are concerned. We’ve never looked like this, felt like this (or smelt like this) before. We haven’t been there, done that or discovered what there is in places we’d never even known about.

It’s a whole different ballgame, in a field where we, along with countless others of us at different stages in our individual journeys are expected not just to survive, but to grow and flourish. Things are different now, or at least, we begin to see things differently.

It’s this vision through the eyes of someone who’s just stepped out through a door that has yet to be closed, that we, who have hitherto primarily illustrated for children, have attempted to capture in this exhibit.

Most of us have had to look back and remember what it was to see things in this new light. Some of us, perhaps, in one way or another, still view life through that lens of renewed or continuing discovery.   

Either way, we invite you to share this vision with us, and to relive the happier highlights of your own adventures in that brave, new world.

THE TURNING POINT

Maybe it was the first time you started the car. The first time you tried on lipstick. Your first pair of high heels. Or that first, queasy feeling you got when she smiled at you from across the street. It was then that you knew, you weren’t one of them, anymore.

No longer with them in the park playing those games, listening to those songs, using that phrase or wearing those clothes. You don’t need permission to do this or that; come to think of it, when was the first time you stopped having to ask?

Wide-eyed and wondering, one day; wending your way to work, the next. It was somewhere in between, that momentous first, occurred.

Whenever it was, whatever they did, whoever they were with, it was then that these illustrators knew—that they grew!

^ So that last bit, there was like a mini show within the show; I think it was about the first time you ever felt all grown up. (In my case, it was the first time I voted, like in an election, like, national lol)

So thank you to my Mom ^^; Thank you to Daylin and Rhea and Mr H. Thank you to Tito Dennis for taking me to the show and thank you to InK for letting me join the show this year especially to Angela and Rex ^^;

And thank You, God. Thank you, Dear Mama Mary, Guardian Angel, Saint Luke, Blessed Fra Angelico, Saint Francis de Sales and all my friend saints. Thank you, dear Holy Souls in Purgatory. I barely managed to make the deadline ^_____^;

And I've barely managed to make up my mind about next year. I don't know; I'm still thinking ^^; Dear Holy Ghost, please help me to make the right decision ~

Revellers

Revellers

Of Merrymaking and the Monsters who Make Merry

My exhibit last year was the fulfillment of an almost-forgotten dream to make a series of paintings depicting Philippine festivals. With Revellers, I wanted to take a closer look at local festivals, not just in themselves but also at some festival customs, as well as individual festivalgoers.

I wanted to focus particularly on individuals at the festivals because of the tendency to look at these events as a whole. Festivals are generally this great mass of people, many of whom dance en masse in the street in fancy costumes (or maybe they’re not costumes…), so it’s tough picking just one out of the crowd. 

A Party in Himself

If you think about it, it’s individuals coming together that make a festival happen. What kind of person shows up at a festival? Why does he go? What makes him get out of bed—early, as like as not, to get things ready, get all dolled up, and get out there and party? Maybe this person has no real reason to celebrate; a frown would suit his circumstances better than a fiesta. But he puts his gameface on, anyway, and revels with the rest of them. 

To me, that shows character, a sort of never-say-die spirit that, as Dumas puts it, chooses to “strike back at fate in retaliation for the blows they receive”, instead of “suffering and swallowing their tears at leisure”. It was this spirit that I hoped to discover beneath the feathers, sequins, and scales, and I figured that it makes more sense to celebrate this spirit with just one person in the picture instead of a whole town.

In celebrating the courage of this individual spirit, each person becomes a party in himself, and when you put all those individual parties together, you get one, big party, which is exactly what a festival is.

A “Fantasy Philippines”

I prefer using the term “person” because of the general association of the term, “human” with the Homo sapiens physiology. I’ve always maintained that it is not the body that makes someone “human”; oftentimes, it’s the people who might appear more or less human who are more human than, well, humans.

Given the possibility that someone who might have blue fur or horns or a tail is also a person, this, to my mind, makes them not just fitting subjects for portraiture, but the subjects of a fantastic, parallel Philippines. I like to think this, “dimension”, if you will, either used to exist or co-exists with the one we live in, now.

And when I say “co-exist”, I don’t mean separately but concurrently—monsters (which is the quick and easy term I prefer to use for non-humans in spite of the term's general connotation) are all around us, I think. Most of us just can’t see them, is all. Maybe someday, we’ll all be able to; maybe we could, even now, if we opened our eyes and our minds wide enough. 

Spot My “Sitters”

Here are the 12 festivals and festival customs I’ve featured in this exhibit; see if you can identify the individual festivalgoers I’ve made portraits of in each of them.

• The Kinabayo Festival is celebrated on July 25th in Dapitan, of which Saint James the Great is patron. They re-enact the Spanish-Moorish wars where Saint James himself appeared wielding a sword and riding a white horse. 

• The Kabayo Festival is held every February in Mandaue City. They decorate tartanillas and hold a parade and a horse race. I imagine tikbalangs in particular would thoroughly enjoy this festival, or probably have a version of their own.

• The Salubong is an Easter custom practised in several parts of the country. I painted this one from memory, when I saw one in Angono some 20-odd years ago with my grandparents, uncle and aunt. The four great birds that flew outward from the giant “banana flower” in the centre made a distinct impression on me.

• The Apo Duwaling festival in Davao, now the Kadayawan, was named after Mount Apo, the Durian, and the Waling-waling. Carried away by the description of the Durian as “the King of Fruit” and the Waling-waling as the “Queen of Orchids”, I ended up showing how the King went for a walk with the Queen through the rainforests of Mount Apo. 

• The Feast of the Holy Cross of Wawa in Bocaue (which is where my beloved step-grandmother’s from) features a fluvial procession in July with a floating pagoda. I’ve featured five, pale reflections of actual pagodas, which are followed round about by swimmers and smaller boats.

• Carrozas in procession are another custom which often features in Philippine festivals. My family and I often walk in procession behind a carroza on certain feast days; I know why we go, but I’m not sure all of the people who watch us go by, do.

• The Flores de Mayo is a festival honouring Our Lady, and holding a Santacruzan is The Custom at that festival. The sagalas in my Santacruzan are dressed in Philippine flowers, as are the little girls who walk to church carrying flowers for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

• It is customary to play Palo-Sebo at fiestas; I hadn’t known before doing this show that the actual climbing starts off as a “group project”. It doesn’t make the climb any less riveting or impressive, though.

• Buntings are customary for festivals pretty much everywhere, but during the Feast of Santa Rita in the town of the same name in Pampanga, they hang umbrellas above the streets, instead—forming an overhead “rainbow road” leading to the Santa Rita Parish Church. 

• The Bailes de Luces festival of La Castellana, Negros Occidental is held in thanksgiving for the previous year’s blessings and in the hope of having another good year. This festival will be 20 years old this year.

• The Basket Festival of Antequera in Bohol, on the other hand, is an even newer festival (although the town itself is some 140 years old). My uncle, the lifestyle editor went to cover the festival recently and brought me back a nifty basket, which I used in the painting and still use every day.

• The Butanding Festival of Donsol features a parade where everybody (human or non-) sports spots. I figured it was a great way for land-dwelling monsters like aswangs and bangungots to  party with water-dwellers like shokoys and the tambanokano’s descendants on their home turf, as it were, for once.

- Jill Arwen Posadas

July 22nd 2017

> Just thought I'd share the original invite my sister made me, as well as my original exhibit notes, written in my own voice (if not 100% in my own words lol), explaining what this show's about and why I did what I did. 

And now I want to say thank you, all in my words, to the people without whom this show would not have been possible:

In Heaven: The Holy Trinity, Mama Mary, my Guardian Angel, Saint Luke, Blessed Fra Angelico, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Catherine of Bologna, Saint Ephrem, Saint Joseph, Saint Maria Goretti, Saint Dominic Savio, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Lawrence, Saint Benedict, Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Aloysius, Saint Alphonsus, Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Augustine, Saint Matthias, Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Cecilia, Saint John, Saint Jude, Saint Rita, Saint Philomena, Saint Claire, Saint Gabriel, Saint Raphael, The Holy Souls, Saint Matthew, Saint Cajetan

On Earth: My mom. My dad. Mr Mon del Rosario, Mr Ed Chua. My sister. My sister's friends, who sat for me: Isab, Isobel, Krishna, Liz, David, Ivan, JP and Jum (sorry, guys, did my best ^^; ). Daylin, for her unwavering support. Ella for sitting for me, too. My cousin Ands for letting me paint my fairy godchild, Allegra. Sir Vincent. Sir Hendry. Mr Jon for knowing what I was up to outside of office hours but allowing me to get up to it, anyway. Fi and Celine. Rhea. Jovan and Mariel for coming through at crunch time. Fr Saa and Fr Peter Fortin. Jones. And to Mr Mark Shellshear of Galeria de las Islas for his kindness.

Previews will be up shortly at jill-arwen-posadas.weebly.com. And I will be out shortly ~ for how long (for real, this time?), I don't know. But one thing's for sure ~ I will never run out of thanks, or things I want to paint. I just need to rest a little, maybe and do a little thinking.

Thank you, everyone. ^_^;

It's okay, I make lamb.

So the theme this year was... "ultimate sacrifice", I think. Let me check... so sorry, it was "Lamb of God". (Close!) I wanted to follow in the footsteps of... Rembrandt and Caravaggio and paint Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac (the Akedah ("the binding of Isaac") ~ or well not really, was just aware of the fact of this being a favourite subject of the old masters ^^ ("Will I ever be as great as the old masters?" ^____^)

Things are twice (thrice, quadruply, quintuply) as hectic as they've ever been and I've scarce a moment to catch my breath ~ am in between paint and pencils, at the moment on #...7 of 24 (*fights off despair*) so I just thought I would, catch my breath lol ~ most fortunate the gallery being near the house as it is, so I'd just time in between content plans and articles to afk, peep in, take a quick pic and get back to one of a bazillion things the bosses need this week.

I'm going to say blessed, now, instead of fortunate, to have had the support of family and friends in putting this poor half-sheepie on the altar ~ I put him there because, well, that nice man who owns the other gallery? Mr Mark? Had been telling Mom n me about how he took his little girl x how his sister had gone to see this lamb get turned into lamb chop in front of them, because we had just been talking, for some reason, about how the poor things never cry out when they become food, they just cry u_u

So I couldn't help thinking about that ever after (I don't know why, I'm just like that) and that's why we have this poor kid (lamb, rather lol) up on the sticks n rocks. Cos for me "ultimate sacrifice" is giving it all, and wanting to, and not making a big fuss over it or, something.

I don't mean to sound irreverent, so sorry, "I'm a vulgar man. But I assure you, my music is not." (Got some nerve, I know!) But I am grateful, super ~ to God, and Mama Mary and my Guardian Angel and aaall my friend saints for helping me stay up and squeeze this out and in, in time ~ now I can replace last year's sheepie which was still on the front page of my folio ^^;

Thank you ever so kindly to Mr D for having me in this show and for putting sheepie II up in spite of the frame being too big (meow, sorry, super, hardly anything I could do). To Bassints for taking a nice photo (cos we all know jill can't take no photos). To Mom for bringing me to the gallery real quick (and to the framer!) and back.

And to Daylin and Ella for their unwavering support and encouragement. Truly, the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away ~ but He giveth again ~ and again, and again, often in places you're least likely to look. Thank you thank you, Sirens ^_~