Discovering Puchette Escaño

MANILA, Philippines - With every stroke of her brush, she awakens something. Something becomes a tremendously sensual work of art that bares her very soul. For painter Maria “Puchette” Pureza Escaño, the essence of her art is her love of life, family and God.

You can call her an incidental painter. Puchette had never thought she would be where she is now — planning a solo show in New York — had New York never taken notice of her in the first place.

A local artist who never called herself a professional painter until last year, Puchette was actually discovered by one of New York’s finest galleries, by chance. “I had made a site to remind myself that I can do this (painting) and then suddenly, I got an invitation to exhibit my paintings in New York. At first, I thought it was a joke,” Puchette recalled. She then asked a friend who lives in New York to check out the gallery and after doing so, the friend exclaimed, “Puchette, it’s in Tribeca!”

That gallery in Tribeca, New York is none other than the infamous Ico Art & Music Gallery, known as one of the most prestigious galleries in the world over where only the best artists are invited to exhibit.

While many would immediately jump at the chance of exhibiting at the Ico Gallery, Puchette still hesitated at first. It was only when her cousin offered to pay for her trip if she agrees to go that she decided that perhaps, she should do the exhibit. “And off I went. It was the first time I was going to go away without my kids. It was hard, I was crying on the plane,” Puchette said.

The exhibit was called “New Motions of the Figure.” Before she went, she shipped off four of her works and carried two more with her. She was prepared to beg the gallery to include her last two paintings, which pretty much arrived last minute. But the curator at the gallery took one look at them and knew it had to be there.

During the show, the very petite Puchette walked around the gallery in a pretty pink ensemble with her husband. She was nervous. She felt like everyone was bigger than her. And then, on that very night, one of her works sold. “It was also an artist who bought ‘Mary Joy’s Garden.’ It was the smallest work in the exhibit, practically the size of a bond paper!” Puchette exclaimed.

There, in her artist statement for the exhibit, she had written, “I do not see art as work. It is rather an answer to that need in my soul to reproduce how I see things with my heart’s eye… the need to hold something raw and use it to express how the wonderful things in God’s good earth move me. Art is my praise to God.”

The exhibit that featured seven artists ran for nearly a month. And in the end, it was only Puchette’s work that sold. There was even one work this 39-year-old mother of two was so attached to, she actually refused to sell it. Of her painting “Homeward,” she said: “It is now in my hometown of Sariaya, Quezon.” That painting is actually her way of showing how much she misses Sariaya.

Puchette’s work is about innocence, love, longing, affection but most of all, happiness. Happiness is exactly what brought Puchette her biggest commissioned project so far, a four-by-two-meter mural entitled “Beachcombers of the Cebu Channel,” commissioned by the Associated Marine Officers’ & Seamen’s Union of the Philippines (AMOSUP), along with the Japan Seamen’s Union for the Mariner’s Court hotel in Cebu. According to Puchette, the Japanese said they wanted to see something happy. And indeed, she made something that made them smile. Her partnership with them has also resulted in the commissioning of another mural for the Mariner’s Court hotel in Davao.

As for exhibits, ever since Puchette came back from New York last year, the invitations to exhibit in the metro have kept coming. Recently she was shown at the “Buhay at Biyaya” exhibit in the Sining Kamalig Gallery at the Gateway Mall, “The Sacredness of Life” at the FPOP Building in New Manila, Quezon City, “Sa Amin May Sining” at the GSIS Museum of Art and “When I Grow Up” at the Rockwell Power Plant Mall. Throughout the year too, Puchette found herself exhibiting for the second time in Ico Gallery in Tribeca for the group exhibit entitled “Collide” while she had recently flew to Roldy, Denmark to exhibit her works at the Gallery Svardson for the International Festival for Culture and Arts.

Puchette is well aware of her blessed career. And with her upcoming exhibit, entitled “Ode to the Father,” Puchette wants to offer a thanksgiving for everything she has received. And afterwards, she is bound for New York, once again, for her very first solo show at the Ico Gallery entitled “The Eyes of the World,” which is expected to showcase 30 of Puchette’s finest works.

For Puchette, everything has been a blessing. And to the art world and for anyone who has seen her works, she is simply, heaven-sent.

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Visit Puchette Escaño’s sites: www.puchetteescano.weebly.com & puchette.multiply.com

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E-mail the author: ravin.facts@yahoo.com.