CONTEMPORARY FILIPINO PAINTERS

Jigger Cruz

- Jigger Cruz lives and works in Manila, Philippines. Cruz studied

Fine Arts at the Far Eastern University in the Philippines and
Design at De La Salle-College of St. Benilde. He has exhibited
widely throughout the Philippines and internationally. He is one
of several young Filipino artists experimenting with new methods
of painting, and his attempt to break with traditional
representation has yielded a new form of automatism.
- Despite making every effort to sublimate himself through his
work, the presence of the artist is deeply felt through the physical
application of the materials: the bold marks made with pigment
and tubes of oil paint, scissor gouges in the canvas, sawed out
corners of the frame, and sometimes streaks of bright spray paint,
carry visible traces of Cruz’s gestures. Figure A – Abstraction Intersection (2015)

- Cruz’s latest works attempt to transcend the anxieties and minutia of

daily life by focusing solely on the process of aesthetic
experimentation. His works are Characterized by colorful, geometric,
and zigzagging lines that fill the canvas, random application of thick
squiggles of oil paint, from pastry cones over impasto swabs, assaults
the viewer with energy and vigor.
- Cruz’s paintings are also deeply connected with the influence of
Catholicism in the Philippines. References to angels, halos, heaven,
and hell abound in his work and, in “Masquerade,” a silhouette
resembling the Virgin Mary occupies the center of the composition.
Figure B – Masquerade (2015)

Elito Circa

- Elito Villaflor Circa, better known as "Amangpintor", is a Filipino painter and internationally
known folk artist, who paints using indigenous human hair and blood fluids with mythologism
and mythicalism subject matters. Circa paints using not only his blood as pigment but also his
hair for texture on the canvas. His work is not exclusive to blood, though, as he is also into oil
and acrylic, or pigment mixed with blood. If the canvas is not saturated with blood, it is at least
signed with his blood.
- The folk painter believes that painting his blood on canvass creates pieces that symbolize life,
love, and sacrifice. Most of his masterpieces also depict rural life in his town in Nueva Ecija. His
paintings are thematic, often with historical and mythical subjects, using legends of his place to
metaphorize the struggles of his people, the beauty of his hometown, the destruction of the
environment.
- He did “Manny Pacquiao Hearted Fist” in 2015 during Pacquiao’s fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
and “President Rodrigo Duterte in the Center of the Triangle,” done last 2016 after Mr. Duterte
won the presidency.
Figure C (L) – Pantabangan Resettlement (1972)
 Figure D (R) – Manny Pacquiao
Hearted Fist (2015)

Sunshine Plata

- Sunshine Plata is a Filipino painter who uses coffee as a

medium in her paintings. Sunshine has a degree in
Psychology from the University of Sto. Tomas. She spent
five years of her life as a pre-school teacher until she
decided to focus on painting. She started painting with
oil; interpreting visual images from her dreams and
draw them as soon as she wakes up. Until she
discovered the use of coffee as a painting material, she
began producing artworks with it. Figure E – Fairy of Sorrows (2008)

- Before, she only uses coffee mixture (kapeng barako most of the time) as
her sole material but now, to produce other hues on her works, she
sometimes adds watercolor to her coffee mixture. Thus, producing
bluish brown, pinkish brown, and so on.
- Plata’s artworks are exhibited unframed so that the viewer can take a
whiff of the caffeine used in the creation of fanciful winged creatures
like fairies and mythical beings, which are her subjects.

Figure F (L) – The Brave Tin Soldier’s Obvious Weakness (2008)

Sources:

 Castro, 2017 “Butterfly Wings, Hair, and Human Blood: These Are Not Your Average Paintings”
(https://www.spot.ph/arts-culture/arts-culture-peopleparties/72259/unusual-art-pinoys-a1806-20171207-lfrm3)
 JR, 2011 “Sunshine Plata, a Coffee Painter, a Batangueña” (http://wowbatangas.com/features/people/sunshine-plata-
a-coffee-painter-a-batanguena/)
 Reuters, 2008 “Philippine artist perks up paintings with coffee” (https://news.abs-
cbn.com/lifestyle/08/27/08/philippine-artist-perks-paintings-coffee)
 Tejero, 2016 “Artist with blood on his hands” (https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/256243/artist-blood-hands/)
 Vasvani, 2016 “A Filipino Artist’s Divine Deluges of Paint” (https://hyperallergic.com/274125/a-filipino-artists-divine-
deluges-of-paint/)