No shortcuts in art, Sanso tells students

MANILA, Philippines - The 2009 Shell Art Interaction Program, which tours key provincial cities yearly to help supplement art instruction in the country, culminated in a talk delivered by globally acclaimed Juvenal Sanso to an audience of art students at The Podium in Ortigas City.

This is Sanso’s second year with the program and the dialogue with students from various universities, he says, is part of his wanting to be back in the Philippines, being a product of the Shell National Student Art Competition himself.

In college at the University of the Philippines, he was told by a professor that “the real talent is wanting to do it.” In art as in life, he always dared despite shaking in his boots. As a student, he joined a prestigious national art contest and upon submitting, he recalls that his extreme shyness drove him to wrap his entry very, very tightly. The entry eventually won first prize. With successful forays into the local art competition scene, his parents became convinced that their boy had talent so they sent him abroad where Sanso gave art his total allegiance, embracing different expressions of art including making frescos, etching, textile-design with Balenciaga, and opera backdrops in Paris.

But he always emphasized to the audience that it was not all roses. Ever a conscientious, diligent student of art and of life, Sanso in his struggling years would make himself uncomfortable sitting for hours on rocks to produce breathtaking paintings of the Atlantic coast, while enduring money problems in a foreign land to fulfill his dreams.

Soaking up all that they could learn from Sanso, young art students at The Podium with their digital gadgets and video-game sensibilities listened intently and where inspired by the master’s words and his works.

“Work, work, work. There are no shortcuts in art.” Sanso exhorts students to dare, but always a daring matched with diligence. “When you shortcut, you are cutting yourself short!”