Reflections on Gilda Cordero-Fernando's aquarelles and Facebook

The woman who wrote prize-winning short stories during her “early housewife years (1952 – 1970)” remains young looking as she attends to guests gracing her exhibit called “Claiming A Piece of Paradise and Facebook.”

Her latest exhibit features 41 new aquarelles and their titles (“Sosi Buddies,” “Attitude,” “Your Majesties,” etc.) are a virtual invitation to the artist’s personal and literary face book.

One could sense a hint of frozen humor and a hint of satire in the faces of Gilda’s artistic Facebook entries.

Like one painting of two ladies the title of which goes:

“Hi I heard you are Papa’s Girl—”

“So are you.”

With those well-shaped mouths with veiled sarcasm, this painting reveals characters from Gilda’s short stories. It was like a scene from a diplomatic reception in Gilda’s “High Fashion” a scene from which goes:

“The loveliest women were present at all his parties… each fashion had all the extravagance of a bacchanalian feast and a fashion opening — each beauty trying to out do the next in the way she tilted her head to show off an expensive tiara or cut a figure against the light of the willowy wand of a dance dress, laughing throatily in the approved pagan manner.”

By coincidence, I find myself laughing “throatily” with guests Vergel Santos and Chit Roces as I dissect Gilda’s all-too familiar aquarelles.

When my chance came, I told Gilda her painting titled “School Administrators” looked like characters from her short story, “The Visitation of the Gods.”

There is a hint of wickedness and civility in her “Cinderella’s Stepsisters” and layers of emotional tableaux in her “Memory of Cruel Love” and “Love Is Also Precious.”

The women in Gilda’s Aquarelles remind me of how — early in her literary career — women figure in her artistic canvas.

Feminist professor Thelma E. Arambulo — in the book A Literary Journey with Gilda Cordero-Fernando — describes women in the artist’s literary aquarelle thus:

“One type is, at the very least, pathetic, at the worst obnoxious. To this type belongs the bubblehead social climber in ‘High Fashion,’ the harassed housewife in ‘The Level of Each Day’s Need,’ the young executive’s wife in ‘Magnanimity,’ as well as the little girl’s mother in ‘Hunger.’”

Lately, I can add her series on “The Senyoras Strike Again” in a lifestyle page of a national daily.       

Moreover, Gilda’s artistic palette covers a lot of ground, both social and slightly political.

Her painting “The Battle Between Good and Evil” is a case in point and so is her “Mutya ng Pasig” which is a funny commentary on the state of pollution of Philippine rivers.

One left the exhibit after an instant heavy rain poured in the surroundings of Silverlens Gallery and couldn’t help recalling Gilda’s past aquarelles.

The last time I saw her, she was in tears hearing baritone Andrew Fernando in the last “Kiss The Cook Gourmet” concert and noticed she wasn’t comfortable being labeled “national treasure,” which she is — whether she likes it or not. She is still apt to dismiss profundity and signs of idolatry the moment she smells them.

Writer-painter Gilda Cordero-Fernando

In the past, she was also not inclined to recall the early writing years. “Gosh, I was an oppressed housewife then,” she mused during my first and last visit to her Panay Avenue abode. “I could never do anything I wanted — and I couldn’t do anything else. That period I was writing fiction was a substitute for the things I wanted to do but couldn’t. When I started living them, I dropped fiction.”

Looking at her intently as she greets her exhibit guests, I can say the writer-painter has aged gracefully. I remember her love affair with the saya, the result of which was a CCP extravaganza that had the late National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag doing rap in a Gilda Cordero-Fernando theater, music and fashion spectacle.

“Jamming on the Saya” — Gilda qualified then — was not a comment on the fashion scene.

Explained Gilda before that unique CCP production: “It’s more an explanation on why people dress the way they do and what we can do with relics from the past.”

Indeed, she considered her saya trip as her way of returning to her roots. “More than any other garment, the saya has been a sensitive barometer of the times. When virginity was a prime virtue, the saya had a high neckline, embroidered sleeves and a voluminous skirt that hardly afforded a peek of one’s heels. From this European shape, it evolved into a gossamer lantern-like tropical Maria Clara with wide sleeves and yoke-like panuelo made of the filmiest piña. After World War II, Ramon Valera edited out the by-then impractical panuelo, provoking a fashion war, and the saya became a one-piece thing, much like the American evening dress.”

The way Gilda described those saya appurtenances reminded me of a passage from her short story “High Fashion,” that part where the couturier was describing the materials he had in mind for his client.

It goes: “To complement your naked beauty, I must have silk of a most fantastic shade that plays on the undiscovered tones of in between reds and greens and yellows. It must have the translucent amber of centuries-old Amontillado, the ephemeral glitter of green in the wingtips of dragon-flies, the elusive wisp of gray in the sulphurous smoke of a dying volcano.”

Gilda pointed out the short story was far from her mind when she thought of “Jamming on the Saya.”

In that story, Gilda said she was dealing with traditional people — and her present team is anything but traditional. “We always try to do something different. If our minds were run of the mill, we would probably produce a TV show with its conventional formula. There are good people I cannot work with because they are too conservative. I prefer something untried, something novel coming from people na medyo baluktot ang utak and I guess that along with good taste, that is the binding factor. If you don’t have good taste, you don’t get to where we hang out and you don’t even get to be my friend.”

Having a last look at Gilda’s 41 aquarelles, I remember what our common friend, Odette Alcantara, said about collaborating with the writer.

Said Odette then of the author’s foray into publishing and doing fashion-theater production: “Working with Gilda is exciting because she is one person who will not repeat herself. I will not miss a chance collaborating with her because her ideas are like a perfect setting for a grand opera.”

Like it or not, Gilda’s aquarelles — featured in “Claiming a Piece of Paradise and Facebook” which runs at Silverlens’ SLab gallery along Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati City until May 28 — are like present-day social villains and heroines in Puccini’s La Boheme.

By then, you can translate the poignant Puccini aria as Gilda’s “Memory of Cruel Love.”