Pakil artist comes into his own

NOTHING better extols the fulfillment of the great Filipino dream than the harvest scene.

From the grand maestro of genre scenes, Fernando Amorsolo, and the supreme neorealist, Carlos “Botong” Francisco, to today’s generation of artists, the images of plenty have become de rigueur, their appeal not diminished by the worsening economic crunch.

A worthy heir to the proud tradition of the harvest icon as fitting emblem of the good life is a homegrown artist from Pakil, Laguna, Bernard Vista.

Born in 1968, Vista took up Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas, earning a slot as varsity scholar as a member of the university swimming team. He swam the 1,500-m freestyle and broke the records in the process.

He was also chosen as scholar by the Saturday Group, handpicked by no less that National Artist Cesar Legaspi.

At UST, he joined a number of art competitions, winning third place in the contest to mark the 400th year of Dominicans in the Philippines in 1987, picking up another third prize in an on-the-spot painting contest on campus, and a major prize in the PBBY Illustrators’ Prize.

After graduating in 1989, he found work as an artist-designer for a trading company. Later, in 1994, he was hired as illustrator by a publishing company, rising to become art director until he quit for good. Having married, he opted to stay in Pakil to raise a family.

In the beginning, Vista was content parlaying the standard subjects expected of an emerging artist-genre scenes and portraits of rural folk - and his figurative style then was hardly distinctive.

But, true to form, his gentle, unassuming ways intact, Vista persevered, honing his craft and submitting his works to the prying eyes of his peers and senior artists. His wife and parents gave him their unqualified support.

Thus, in his first solo exhibit “Biyaya” (Galerie Joaquin, until Sept. 7), the artist has finally come into his own. The scenes he executed are filled with an air of abundance and profusion. From golden fields to shining sea, farmers and fishermen are shown as kindred folk who go about their task with perseverance and efficiency.

Grain of realism

The grain of realism spills over the canvases: Here is an artist who has lived all his life in the same surroundings that have yielded the bounty and munificence of God’s creation.

A trademark of Vista is the figure of the bent head, which has its origin in the works of Tam Austria, an influential artist from Tanay, Rizal. But Vista has appropriated the image to suit his iconic style of delineating characters hard at work, the collective spirit of industry binding them all.

Vista’s male figures have squat and compact bodies, an influence borne by his infatuation with National Artist Ang Kiukok (another UST artist like Austria and Vista), their outsized hands and feet limned in steely strength. One also notices the striking resemblance between the artist and the faces on the canvases.

Another discernible quality is the overtly dramatic presentation, approximating a living and breathing tableau unfolding before our eyes.

Indeed, in one large painting, Vista has painted the seminal story of the good harvest, a mural that shows the entire cast playing their assigned parts, from the family of farmers in the center of the painting, the mother cradling her baby, to the fishermen on the right, the farmer on the left, the vendor further down the canvas, and the image of another woman gently pouring water from an earthen jar.

The show’s piece de resistance is the quartet of images in the “Four Vendors” series, showing vendors plying their assorted wares of fruits, vegetables and flowers. The three paintings with seemingly similar set of characters could have been done perfunctorily, but Vista has infused into each his idiosyncratic and lifelike brushwork.

The cycle of life and death, of work and play, of laughter and sorrow, is the collective drama of the Filipino psyche. It is to Vista’s credit that he has chosen to work in the grand tradition of rustic realism but with a uniquely innovative eye.

View Biyaya Exhibit Artworks

View Bernard Vista's Profile