“I had to stay indoors. Like everyone else, I was afraid to go out. And life changed. At first, I did not know what to do. I was focused on checking what was happening to the world.
Then I started painting to raise funds for our front liners. There were so many who supported my efforts. Gradually, I found my stride again.”
Like everyone else, painter and multi-awarded poet Migs Villanueva stayed at home and used her time preparing for her 12th solo exhibition, which also marks her 60th birthday.
Her exhibition, divided into three phases like a good story, has a beginning, a middle, and a wonderful end, based on our collective memory of this pandemic. The first works, almost monochromatic, mark the early phase as we realized that COVID-19 was here. The monochromatic works echo the simple life we all suddenly found ourselves living indoors.
“It was such a sudden change. So I wanted to portray that visually, with a more basic palette… I focused on children. How they coped… Children have a natural resilience because their imagination allows them to be anywhere they want to be. Sometimes, a change of perspective can do wonders to our well-being. And this is what we can all do, in the meantime,” says Migs.
Migs did not plan to be a painter. But with her zeal in excelling on anything she takes up, she has had twelve years in this serendipitous career. Tutored by Malang, she has risen the ranks of the Saturday Group to become one of its presidents. Since then, she has exhibited all over the Philippines and in various art fairs in countries like Hongkong and Malaysia. Like her mentor, she has mastered the evocative through the use of color, outline, and diffused brush strokes. Through the use of just three dots, she can express an innocent stare, a joyful laugh, a nervous giggle, longing, or a child’s impetuous sulking. Evolving her own style, conjuring beauty through austere simplicity and a “wabi-sabi” sensibility, like the value of a leaf, shadows cast in a moonlit night, a tiring afternoon of play, or the reassuring presence of a sibling or a friend.
“In The Meantime” proposes a healthy perspective, given the present situation. It urges us to transform the dreary and dreadful into a life embraced and truly lived with the contentment and imagination of children. “I always enjoy my apos… Innocence is so precious. I would like them to have it for as long as I could. COVID-19, like all the hard things in this world can make us worry, even cynical. But if we look at children, we will realize that we can still be happy despite everything. It is just a matter of perspective.”
“In the Meantime” is Migs Villanueva’s 12th solo exhibition, presented by Art Lounge Manila, at the ground floor of The Podium Mall in Ortigas Center . It also marks her 60th birthday.
