An artist’s heart

One piece of hard-boiled egg and plain rice on a plastic plate is a lunch for Marcelo Quezon, one of the assistant teachers in a painting workshop at the Philippine Medical Women’s Association (PMWA) in Quezon City. On is right hand, after several hours of holding pencil and paint brushes, was a plastic fork used a spoon to feed himself.

The 26-year-old artist was not much different from the other artist in the place. One look at them and none would ever think that they are the makers of beautiful and striking pieces of paintings displayed at the Intellectual Property Building in Makati City. Together with the other artists, Quezon has been spending his time teaching other people learn the different techniques in painting such as oil, pastel, acrylic and watercolor. He likes every medium, but he says he excels most on pastel.

Being an artist requires a lot of passion in the field. Every stroke of his brush should show the strength of the story, every color created from creative mixtures should set the mood of a piece, and every final product should declare something essential. These are actually the idea they are trying to passed on to the next generation of painters, because these things distinguish an artist from an ordinary man. As Fernando Sena, the head teacher of the painting workshop said, “When a person uses his hand for work, he is a laborer; when he uses his hand and head, he is a craftsman; but when he uses his hands, head and heart, he is an artist.”

Quezon’s simplicity in art manifests in his works. Most of his subjects are under the theme of “still life” where simple picture of fruits, a duck, a velvet cap and a pink Converse shoes hanged on the wall – all in made in pastel. Some of his works are also with an idea of nudity. Two of his paintings displayed in his exhibit portray a woman wearing two piece and another painting showing three children naked. But don’t think bad immediately. Quezon only showed his subjects’ backs.

For most people, paintings are products of someone else’s past time, but most painters count them as their source of living. Quezon’s works worth as much as P20,000. It could be a large sum of money for a single piece as long as it is sold, otherwise, it still adds nothing to a painter’s earnings. Since selling a painting is very unpredictable, some artists like Quezon have other jobs like teaching and modeling. None of them solely depends on painting as their only livelihood.

As we talked, he stopped eating occasionally, but the longest time he paused was when I asked what could make him stop his career as a painter. He smiled as usual and simply answered,

“‘pag wala na akong kinikita.”

Prince Charming’s Neverland

Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and all fairy tales princesses have in common – a handsome, gentle and brave prince charming. Every girl dreams of being like them, but as the story books close, those fairy tales remain to be plain fantasies.

From the simple, gentle and very modest images of women in those fairy tales, the reality now shows different women leveling up with men. Can you just imagine Cinderella and her Prince Charming doing the same job? What about if Rapunzel was aggressive enough to go down the tower and not lay down her long hair to be rescued? Will their Prince Charmings still be needed in the stories?

In our society, there are certain traditions expected from both men and women. Filipino culture tells us that men should court women and they must work harder. But now, courtship falls back on body language, a form of non-verbal communication understood by both sexes.

According to Allan Pease, author of The Definitive Guide to Body Language, what really turns men on is female “submission” gestures, which include exposing vulnerable areas such as the wrists or neck, as well as the leg twine (it involves crossing the legs and hooking the upper leg’s foot behind the lower leg’s ankle). Men typically make themselves look more dominant by taking up space and engaging in “crotch display” – thumbs hooked in pockets, fingers “pointing” at their genitals.

Present day Prince Charmings are not what fairy tales describe and tells them to be. They do not ride horses and travel through the woods, fight a ferocious dragon and rescue princesses from a tower. Some of them simply sit and enjoy their lives to the fullest. Why? Because every Prince Charming has a Peter Pan in them. They always want to go back to Neverlands where they can just fly and play and never grow up.

The Power and the Glory – Book Review

The real world and religion are usually portrayed to be inseparable. The church as a whole has experienced different persecutions and priests have received scandalous issues such as having mistresses and being gay. But in the midst of these problems, many priests still continue their duties in the church.

Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory tells the story of Father José, a native priest in Mexico who was compelled by the state and his cowardice to marry. When persecution became worse, he remembers “the gift he had been given which nobody could take away. That was what made him worthy of damnation – the power he still had of turning the wafer into the flesh and blood of God.” The whisky priest can no longer find the meaning in prayer but to him “the Host was different: to lay that between a dying man’s lips was to lay God.”

Graham Greene’s pessimism about the temporal world, derived apparently form his childhood memories and reinforced by is experience of the Depression of the 1930’3, was both intensified and made bearable by his religion. Catholicism was a major influence on his works.

He was also influenced by his experiences as journalist, which contributed to the remarkable topic of many of his novels. Works of this type include The Quiet American (1955), set in Indochina; Our man in Havana (1958), set in pre-Castro Cuba; and The Comedians (1966), set in Haiti of President Duvalier.

Greene also wrote short stories and a number of plays, including The Living Room (1953), The Plotting Shed (1957), and The Complaisant Lover (1959). He adapted several of his works for the screen.