Variations on a theme

Variations 3 is the most recent exhibition of two giants and one newcomer in the watercolor landscape business: Edgar Doctor, Lino Severino, and Ching Caluag. Held at the lobby of the Discovery Suites, Ortigas Center, Variations 3 is for the benefit of the Vince Hizon Foundation, established by the renowned basketball player and Ateneo alumnus to provide educational scholarships for needy youths.

Fifteen works from each artist show the various approaches that each has chosen to concentrate on, and are famed by their audiences and patrons for. Doctor’s long-standing fascination with the sea, the city, and the bounties of nature and man are seen in his latest series of aquarelles, with its distinct cubistic approach he honed in four decades of artmaking, ever since his early days at Mabini. The populist appeal of bright colors, simple contrasts, and a swift painting technique still holds true, as can be seen in such works as "Morning Catch 2002," with its turquoise waters, white sand beaches, and baskets overflowing with the day’s catch; or the delectable noche buena laden dining table in "Simbang Gabi." Christmas being around the corner, Doctor smartly tunes in to the season of giving as a theme, not only in the previous piece, but in others as well, such as "Christmas in the City," whose abstract juxtaposition of urban and feast elements on a brown ground makes us remember the good old days in the 1970s, when artists did hand-painted Christmas cards for a living. This holds on with other works, such as the vivacious "Juggler," with its wet-on-wet technique casting soft shadows in the background, highlighting the clown and his tossed bottles in sharp counterpoint.

In Severino’s case, the classic en plein aire watercolor does the job just as efficiently. Cobbled together mostly from the Silay-born but now Antipolo-based artist’s vast reserve of landscapes going back 30 years, they show the debt that Mang Lino owes to the late National Artist Vicente Manansala, who was his mentor and outdoor sketching buddy in the late-1970s (when he wasn’t flying airplanes for PNB full of cash, that is). Among the set is the treasure of a gem that is "Watercolor No. 291 (Sorrento, Italy)," in which the magnificent sunshine of the Midi is profoundly captured and refracted as modulated ocean blues, flecked terra cotta red, or stark limestone white. Contrast this with the meditative grays, browns and blacks of "Watercolor No. 466 (Angono)," or the spike of gradated emerald yellow in "Watercolor No. 1163 (Ormoc)," where the task of capturing the Philippine vista is rendered not in the full blast radiation of a summer noon (which can be quite harmful to the eyes), but basked in the modulated glow of an amihan mid-afternoon, the refreshingly cold wind blowing gently at one’s face, and clouds fleeting across the sky, never threatening to rain. Together with Doctor, Severino is arguably among the most faithful of Mang Enteng’s tubiglay disciples, who uses watercolor not to blot out the paper, but to bring out the quiet alchemy between ground and wash, not like many younger ones today who treat Arches Paper as if it was an embarrassment to be covered up with gouache (if not acrylic).

Ching Caluag’s entry to the artworld (facilitated by Doctor, who is her mentor) is not to be mistaken for socialite boredom. The former Makati Garden Club president who still actively works for environmental programs like the Trees Project, makes watercolor both her refuge from life’s challenges, and her inspiration to go on. Her sincere love for nature shows through, with her series of tree and live flower renditions, always framed with a light cerulean background. Nature’s colors are taken at face value, and highlighted, removing extraneous elements in order to concentrate on the one subject of each aquarelle that is important: Flaming scarlet hibiscus; golden yellow irises; or the flecked viridian of an acacia canopy framed in sunset hues.

If Manansala were alive today, he would be very appreciative that some of his disciples are following the true path of plein aire watercolor, without the power trips and psycho hangups that bedevil today’s young hotbloods. We may not have had a Barbizon or Hudson School, but the aging apostles of tubiglay have at least a decent chance of adding variety to lakeshore art that Botong’s legacy had started.