Dominic Rubio

Dominic Rubio: Pictures of the Grand Colonial Past

April 25, 2011 /  E-3

Text by Pam Brooke A. Casin

One could just imagine Laguna-based painter Dominic Rubio cooped up in his Laguna studio, listening to the idyllic and kundiman chops of Ric Manrique, the folk-rock tunes of Florante, and the free-spirited music of Gary Granada while mixing colors on his palette and painting nostalgic sceneries of cultural and aesthetic grandeur from the colonial past. The artist says that he gets his painting groove by just traveling along the melodic lines of the above-mentioned trifecta and, later on, even the old pop songs of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos. Visual inspiration, he says, on the other hand, comes from the many history books and costume albums stacked in his home-cum-atelier.

It’s hard not to miss Rubio’s signature canvases of chinky-eyed Filipino figures with exceptionally thin, elongated necks clad in classic Filipiniana garments and period costumes. One can always spot a Rubio piece among a sea of paintings with ease. Characterized by brilliantly hued clothes that serve as mirrors of the society at a given time, Rubio’s pieces are seemingly the follow-up to the documentation and genre-works of the first Filipino painter Damian Domingo, whose tipos del país or types of the country had paved the way for the flourishing of visual arts in the country back in the Spanish colonial era.

A graduate of commercial arts from the University of Santo Tomas, the 41-year-old Rubio says that his stylized choice of distorting his subjects’ features and lengthening their necks came only after he had spent two years developing his own painterly style. Although he has had an exhibit at the Ad Infinitum in 2001 that dealt with mother-and-child and the ethnicities of a Filipina and a major show in 2003 at the Galerie Joaquin that also explored the sensibilities of Filipino women, it wasn’t until 2006 when Rubio became equally known as the other active and exhibiting painters in the country. Rubio admits that he had a very difficult time breaking into the art scene and letting the discriminating and discerning public appreciate his art during the early stages of his artistic journey. He recalls of a time when he toiled as a messenger for an advertising agency for the sake of having money just to pay the bills and when galleries constantly snubbed his early repertoire because he was still virtually unknown in the scene, that is, he was a no-name painter without any art exhibitions under his belt. There was even a time, he discloses, when he purposely left Manila for Davao del Sur and decided to pursue his art there, thinking that his works might be appreciated and understood more in the southern province.

It was his two-year stay in Davao that perhaps helped Rubio gradually discover his fondness for culture and heritage since he was able to travel around the Caraga Region in Northern Mindanao, learning about the various cultural groups in these places such as the Mandaya and Tiboli tribes as well as the Bilaans and the Badjaos in his stint farther down south of Mindanao. Rubio was then influenced by the richness and effervescence of the culture of the south that he integrated it to his artworks via the intricacies and vibrancy of his Filipina figures’ garments.

Years later, we would get to see the evolution of Rubio as painter and the fruition of his life-long dream. And his works, now more than ever, are seemingly a great and appropriate paean for the artist’s resolve. Aesthetically speaking, we may see Rubio’s distinct elongated necks as merely an effect of experimentation or a gratification of the artist’s whim. Yes, one may see it that way at first. But if we are to speak in metaphors, one may realize how the extended necks are a symbol to Filipino pride and progress or in Rubio’s words, “pag-unlad, paglago, at pagyaman.” Rubio also mentions that the necks demonstrate this should-be  taas noo” temperament of Filipinos amidst woes and struggles.

A s i d e f r o m Rubio’s stylistic deviation in form and figure, what makes a Rubio piece appealing to the Filipino and Asian palate is the artist’s whimsical and quixotic interpretation of the lush and opulent manners of “Old Asia.” His contemporary canvases boast of archetypes or “people types” dressed in 19th-century costumes and placed in day-to-day scenes within the colonial glory days that showcase the cultural multiplicity and panache of Old Asia’s urban dwellers, as well as the artist’s sensitivity towards heritage and culture.

The central philosophy in Rubio’s pieces, according to art writer and curator Reuben Ramas Cañete, is this “colonial image that refuses the bonds of Western imperialism…a catchphrase that concentrates on the strength of native life touched by colonial mores, but not subject to the servitude of its masters.”

Seen in Rubio’s paintings are mixed-blood denizens leisurely walking about women clad in “elegant and visually stunning ensemble of beige terno blouses, striped indigo tapis skirts, and ankle-length pleated undergowns” and men “dressed according to their profession or social status: camisas and short cotton trousers for Chinese mestizos; embroidered barongs, top hats, canes, and silk trousers for the native gobernadorcillos and hidalgos; or rolled-up camisas, trousers, and wide-brim hats for the paisantes and farmers.”

Rubio says that he’s definitely getting the hang of painting these pretty pictures of the colonial past and confesses that doing so makes him happy and content. But more importantly, in so doing, Rubio not only satiates his visual palate but creates a pleasant longing for the past among his audiences. His opuses are a bold attempt to re-animate people’s interest in the past as well as to evoke that sense of national pride and identity seemingly becoming lost and wanting among Filipinos.

At the end of the day, his art is a rejuvenating shot to let people get sophisticated glimpses of our grand past; it is a peep-hole to the glorious old Philippines and a reminder that if we’ve achieved such grandiosity and prosperity in the past, we can achieve them once more in the present.