Magnificent leaps on (and outside of) the canvas

Truth is hidden beneath several eyes. To pursue it, abstract painter Nestor Olarte Vinluan has been painting essences of the earth, the sky, and the sea for more than 20 years, from the 70s to the mid-90s. In 1998, he succeeded in capturing man’s essence on canvas, following his struggle with nature which, for a long time, was the only image seen in his works.

Vinluan’s colorful landscape is not about exotic forests or foreboding skies. It does not evoke the smell of the earth or resplendent sunshine. It is about his intense interaction and dialogue with nature, the sense of music and emotions that they evoke which, in turn, are distilled in his mind before they become strong colors and lyrical compositions on canvas. Before and after his graduation from the University of the Philippines (Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1972) and Pratt Institute in New York (master’s degree in 1982), he remained fixated in depicting the sky and earth or sea, their separation and merger, and the surprising similarities of the two different elements that are separated by the horizon.

"I used four different panels that represent the earth and the sky to make a whole painting in a piece entitled ‘Synthesis,’ which was shown at (Taft’s) Sining Kamalig in 1978. Despite the stark difference of the four panels, they seem related to one another, in a congruent way," he says. Before graduating from Pratt, he tackled a thesis on the mysterious and magical unity of opposites.

In real life, earth is man’s territory. In Vinluan’s hands, the horizon that connects the earth and the sky becomes a space where man’s essence, despite his absence on canvas, is all the more felt, ironically, with echoes and silences. With originality, Vinluan has transformed the horizon into a philosophical space that signifies man’s struggle between understanding and misunderstanding. He has also morphed the horizontal line that prevails in his seascapes and landscapes into a metaphysical force of unity. He is the only Filipino abstract painter who has animated his landscape as a man’s true home.

"You can see silence and meditation (and not necessarily the earth and the sky) in Puerto Santiago," he says when describing his series of famous abstract landscapes in 1971.

Eleven years ago, in 1998, after the end of his term as dean of the UP College of Fine Arts (a stint that began in 1989), Vinluan’s paintings suddenly changed. After many years of making magnificent leaps from earth to sky or from sea to sky on canvas, he started to bend horizontal lines into circles. Yes, the horizon that separates the earth and the sky vanishes in a circle. Opposites unite more than collide in a circle. Centering on the meaning of the horizon in his landscape, Vinluan plunged deeper into the world of non-representational art, and the difficult job of giving shape to echoes and silences, or to aroma and spirit, as humanly as he could on larger pieces.

"I still get inspiration from a leaf or a rock, or from the sky. What I see and feel become textures and colors on canvas that give hints of the natural. But my works are now an approximation of the cosmos, of something spiritual," he says.

"I have been moving away from the horizon. I am now working with painted light or radiation, or of movements of colors from the middle to the edges of the canvas," he explains.

Dots of shimmering colors creep and crawl from the center to the outer edges of his recent works in two shows entitled ‘Radiance’ at Ayala Museum in late 2008 and ‘Art After 40’ at Cubao’s Sining Kamalig from November 2008 to February 2009. These works are proof that he is no longer struggling between the concrete and the abstract. He is no longer aiming to go beyond nature because he has found more than nature. He is now aiming to achieve the real colors of absence and existence on canvas, more from experience, meditation, and philosophy than from the color wheel.

Doing that is like amplifying silence, or carving several concise contours of something ambiguous. Doing all of these with feeling, expertise, and purpose, on big works, has made Vinluan a giant master of sensitivity on canvas. His unending desire to plumb the dark (or white) hole of man’s meaning and existence has given his works depth and discernment, more than rich colors and lyricism that he is already a master of.

"Instead of painting colors on canvas, I throw dots with three or five layers of colors onto the canvas," he says, adding, "I call my creative process controlled chance. I don’t work on an easel. I work on the floor or on a table. I work for a long time on one piece. I give it time." He talks to his canvas while at work.

His recent fascination with circles and spheres can be traced back to earlier shows. For the first time, he included sculptures made of white-colored cement in a painting exhibit entitled "Of Earth, Sky, and Spirit" at SM Art Center in 1998. "I started making sculptural pieces because I did not want to limit myself to wall-bound works," he explains, adding, "I bore holes from the center to the lower walls of the concrete balls to make them light and bouncy. They were arranged to create a feeling of radiance."

He painted round river stones for an experimental assemblage of tinted root and wood planks at Luz Gallery in 1986. He used arc- and oval-shaped canvases to portray mystical landscapes and organic forms at the Cultural Center in 1975. He started using octagonal canvas, an abstract approximation of the exotic Mandalas of the Tibetans, in 1974.

"The circle or the sphere gives me a feeling of wholeness," he explains when asked to compare his recent pursuit of radiance or light with his old abstract landscapes.

With audacity, he once propped up a real door, painted in blue, on a wall that was painted with a mystical landscape at an exhibit at Shop 6, Sining Kamalig in 1974. This work betrayed his home-bound ties that exacerbated his early struggle between the abstract and the concrete.

"When I went to UP, I didn’t understand abstract art. I was doing works that were ‘what you see is what you get’," he recalls. At 16, he left northern Luzon’s Pozorrubio, Pangasinan. He still remembers a pond and a well in his parent’s estate every time he paints a circle and a landscape.

As a student, he copied the Water Lilies of French Impressionist painter Eduard Monet (born 1840). "From Manet, I learned how to mix colors through layering. His greens turn into many hues," he says.

In UP, he was mentored by Jose Joya, Constancio Bernardo, and Dr. Rod Perez Paras. Outside UP, Lee Aguinaldo, Arturo Luz, and Philippine-Spanish painters Juvenal Sanso and Fernando Zobel influenced him. German surrealist Max Ernst (1891) and French Yves Tanguy (1900) inspired him in the late 70s. Latvian-American abstract artist Mark Rothko (1903) and American-German abstract artist Ad Reinheardt (1913) were his idols in New York in the 80s. "Then I found myself working on what I really liked. I have evolved since then," says Vinluan, adding, "To be original, one has to be stronger than one’s influences."

As a teacher since 1982, "I have been challenging students to open up their minds, think, and discuss so that they can make their own art." As a dean, "I have transferred the UP College of Fine Arts from the top of the UP Library near the College of Veterinary, ending its homelessness for 87 years."

"As a person, I hope to radiate with people," he says. -- Reprinted from The Manila Bulletin