Paintings from the sky

Pilot-turned-painter Daniel Victor Raventar says his paintings are from the sky. He discovered the beauty of landscapes, first, from above, while taking off and landing his plane. Fourteen years ago, he decided to become a landscape painter (making him an inch closer to the earth). Since then, every time he captures sceneries on canvas, he soars skyward with thanks, prayers, and homage to nature’s real creator.

The globe-totter, easel-and-brush-carrying pilot has an invisible Bible in his heart that he could not help but put verses on his canvases. They have served as titles and recollections of inspirations, if they are not yet his signatures on his works. No other landscape painter of his dedication and caliber has unabashed piety to say with humility and conviction, "Only God can make a tree."

"Sometimes I start with a verse. Then I hunt for a scene that fits the verse. When I see a beautiful scene, my first impulse is to look for a verse, not to sit down and paint. I am a different painter in that way," says Raventar. "All the time, up to now, I feel that pictures and verses should go hand in hand. I have been making perfect pairs of sceneries and holy sayings since I started painting," he explains.

If Biblical verses are syllables of saints who strive for the Infinite, it is the same way with Raventar. Verses have been ingrained in him since he became a non-Catholic believer in 1983 (26 years ago), in the same way that flying has become a second nature to him, after a stint of more than 40 years, from 1965 to his retirement in 2006.

Raventar’s brush strokes, although impressionistic in nature, are diffident approaches to a perfect world without interpretation. Raventar copies the world, specially its beautiful images, studiously and quietly, not to arrive at the work of a genius but of an unknown artist who wants perfection on canvas the way he has seen fit for God’s creations.

Raventar admits he has yet to paint a landscape that can stir the viewer to where his heart is, sans verses or words of wisdom on his canvas. They tend to instruct needy viewers and also obstruct the view of the more sophisticated art readers. If other artists have other agenda outside of the canvas, for Raventar, his silent and ultimate aim is to whisper, nay shout that the images, colors, lights, and shapes that he has captured on canvas, arranged by his way of seeing now and controlled by his regenerated hands and eyes now, are no longer his.

In other words, he is painting about the soul of creation, of deep humbling to the path of perfection, but he comes up with a natural world that anyone can see on canvas. He has yet to plumb the spirit of a landscape’s creation, or dig deeper into the essence of how a magical creation takes place, presented, alas, without the artist’s ego taking center stage. That tension (felt by a humble creator who wants to capture God’s power on canvas) has yet to spark more fire and more magical forms of nuances of belief from Raventar’s able hands.

"I am sharing many things in my paintings," says Raventar during a private showing of new pieces at his home in Merville Subdivision in southern suburban Parañaque, after a month-long show at Fort’s Le Souffle which ended mid-February.

"I discovered my other talent late in life, in 1995," he says. It happened when he found his wife Imelda or "Emy" engrossed in cross-stitching. "She did not want to talk to me while she was at work, so I decided to have a hobby of my own which I could develop in between flights," he recalls. He chose acrylic because he was afraid of the "unforgiving nature of watercolor." He was then Ayala Corporation’s private pilot.

"During out-of-town assignments, instead of watching TV, I painted in my hotel," he says. He started with trees, rocks, soil, mountains, rivers, houses, and nipa huts until he was filling up canvases with mastery each day. While abroad, he took photos of tantalizing sceneries and the changing seasons, which he composed at home or while traveling. "Normally, while painting, I listen to sermons on tapes. It’s like being inspired by something else, not by the creative process itself," he explains.

"I haven’t done figures or portraits. They are taxing, psychologically," he says. Lately, his landscapes are seen from above, approximating a pilot’s towering and sweeping glance. When asked why he could not paint the other side of beautiful landscapes, like the murky and dark realities known by many Filipinos, he says, "It is hard to paint something that is ugly."

In 2000, Raventar confided to the late Lino Severino, another pilot who took up painting seriously, about his newfound love. "In that year, he took two of my paintings and advised me to collect more for a show. With 27 pieces, I had my first one-man show at the Ayala Museum in 2001," recalls Raventar. His guest of honor was his surprised boss, Jaime Zobel, who bought three art works. "Now, I’m painting eight hours every night. In the past, I painted five evenings a month," says Raventar, adding, "I don’t miss flying now that I am busy painting."

He has seen more exciting sceneries from above when he was with the Philippine Air Force, a stint that began after his graduation from the elite Philippine Military Academy in 1969. He experienced carrying military logistics on a C-47 cargo plane. He seeded clouds with salt to make rain from a plane that was not pressurized. "But I was not involved in the bombings in the south," he says of war-torn Mindanao.

Raventar’s other treasures include Emy, his wife since 1973, and their three sons: Mikael, 34, and his wife Yoko (formerly of Reuters, Manila), now franchise holders of a care provider in Toronto; Gabriel, 30, a physical therapist in Houston, married to a fellow physical therapist; and Nathaniel, 20, single, chef and now a sales force of medical equipment’s distributing firm. -- Reprinted from The Manila Bulletin