CEBU, Philippines – In its simplicity, the artistic medium known as watercolor continues to be a popular attraction in the fairgrounds of creative destinations - "basic" in its overall executor techniques and concepts, yet dignified in its potential for creative innovation. When done right, the luster of a watercolor painting can outshine the glow of an oil-on- canvas piece - intoning poetic degrees of acute detail, defined by the medium's literally fluid and unpredictable properties.
When done right, a watercolor painting can dramatically suggest form without literally depicting it - alluding to its versatility and innate complexities as a difficult-to-master medium.
These versatile fluencies of watercolor is essentially the glue that binds "Waterproof: A League Front Runner Series," Qube Gallery's featured art exhibition for the second half of September.
With more than 25 watercolor paintings made by six masters of the medium, the exhibit proffers the creative diction of visual artists Siegfredo "Fred" Galan, Maxcel Migallos, Billy Pomida, Pablo Bean Santos, Jose "Kimsoy" Yap and Pempe Ybañez.
Featuring a range of still-lifes, landscapes, seascapes and veritable examples of the narrative painting form, the show breathes a refined sense of awe and wonder to what would normally be viewed as commonplace - framed by the transparencies and vibrant shades and hues that can be juxtaposed by the medium.
Though traditional in its overall theme and tone, "Waterproof's" presented works are actually forged from a calibrated balance between content and process-oriented methods - given how the fluidity of the medium requires a significant amount of planning before any execution can be done.
In essence, the exhibit intones how artistic mediums are part in the politics that's always involved in the making of art - in how creative mediums impose a sense of identity on a work without cutting any ties to the populated constituency of painting conventions, methods and techniques.
Opening on September 10, the exhibit ran until yesterday in Qube Gallery at The Henry Hotel in Banilad, Cebu City.