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.”