Egai Roxas

Eghai Roxas: Illusions on Canvas

Text by PAM BROOKE A. CASIN

It’s different for every artist — the first seduction, that is. 

Is it the intoxicating smell of turpentine? Is it the physicality of wielding the brush on a very large blank canvas? Is it the emancipating feeling of being able to fully express one’s self without having to follow rules? Is it the achievement to fashion one’s own universe? Is it the surprisingly sensuous quality of oil, charcoal, acrylic, or clay on one’s weathered hands? Is it the alluring promise of the darkroom? Is it the realization of unlocking possibilities with just a sleight of the hand? Or is it the fulfillment of one’s mission to serve people through art? 

For visual and performance artist Eghai Roxas, the first seduction was learning that he is able to create objects and give them life. Roxas was amazed at how easily it was for him to give inanimate objects a three-dimensional characteristic on a rather flat surface, either on canvas or on paper, when he was 15 years old, and this epiphany excited him. Later, Roxas would be known in the local art circuit because of his fanaticism for the three-dimensional and because of his ground-breaking illusory pieces.

What a wondrous experience it must have been for the young Roxas when he went on to have summer art classes under his uncle, who was friends with notable artist Sym Mendoza and who belonged to the group of the early Mabini artists.

“I was an apprentice in my uncle’s studio. I used to clean the space as well as the art materials there,” relates Roxas. “Later, I was taught how to make still life, landscapes, and seascapes. I was only 15 then but I was already handling oil and Grumbacher at that.” Grumbacher is one of the leading manufacturers and providers of art materials to the world over since 1905.

When Roxas went to college at the Philippine Women’s University (PWU), he already had a considerable amount of knowledge on the fundamentals of art. His professors noticed. After finishing his freshman year at PWU, Roxas opted to transfer to the University of the Philippines (UP). Roxas’ decision didn’t mean that his talent had no chance of flourishing in PWU. Self-supporting, Roxas thought he would be able to continue his art studies at the state university where tuition was relatively easy on the pocket.

Earning good grades, Roxas became a Jose Joya scholar. “Professor Joya brought me to Pitoy Moreno and I worked for him,” Roxas says. “Most of Joya’s scholars such as Rock Drilon, Benjie Cabangis, and Jonah Salvosa also took that path but it was me who stayed doing that job the longest.” 

Working for Moreno meant hand-painting acrylic-based floral patterns on the couture gowns of then First Lady Imelda Marcos. This job also made him one of the revered fashion designer’s scholars. Roxas’ sideline supported his financial needs and it became his bread and butter. This was in the 1970s. It was the time when Ferdinand Marcos’ presidency was starting to get marred by controversy, authoritarian corruption, nepotism, political repression, and human rights violations, among others, causing the ‘radicalization’ of the country’s student population.

As a young folk in UP entrenched in figuration of social realism, an art movement that denounces the egotistic pursuits of the regime, captures on canvas social injustices and political unrest, triumphs working-class activities and life’s struggles, Roxas saw that his works edged with social commentary conflicted with his ideals. But Roxas had no choice because he had to earn a living, he had to support his studies. “[Working on Imelda’s gowns] didn’t mean that I was for the government,” Roxas stresses. “There were many occasions that I was hesitant to work because I wanted to attend rallies.” 

Armed with the intense advocacies of social realism, Roxas found himself painting with the likes of Renato Habulan, Antipas Delotavo, Pablo Baen Santos, Egai Talusan Fernandez, Neil Doloricon, and Jess Abrera. “Social realism was in my heart. Ramdam ko siya. Why? Because I grew up in Tondo and I saw firsthand how difficult life was,” he explains. “Namulat kami sa prinsipyong ‘lingkod-sining.’ We were united by this belief that art should be for and by the people.”

Roxas’ early subjects were the peasants, the proletariats, the average Filipinos, among others. “I used the salary I was earning from Pitoy to support my paintings,” Roxas tells. “In 1986, we won. The people won. And so we were faced with the dilemma of whether or not to go on painting social realities,” he says. Some of Roxas’ friends in the social realist bloc continued while others carried on to pursue different painterly expressions. Roxas decided to travel.

Abroad, Roxas saw himself admiring abstract illusionist works in places he visited. “Nakita ko ‘yung isang malaking artwork sa Los Angeles. Parang lumalapit ‘yung painting sa akin. Hinihigop ako,” Roxas muses. “I felt that the painting and I communicated at that moment. Even if it was abstract, I felt that it was alive.”

Influenced by what he saw and felt overseas, Roxas came back to the Philippines with the aesthetic principles of abstract illusionism. An artistic movement that became prominent during the mid-1970s, abstract illusionism boasts of an expressionistic abstract painting style that made use of perspective, artificial light sources, and cast shadows to accomplish the illusion of a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. Deceptive, it is an art that suggests elements and objects are floating in a three-dimensional plane or in a quasi-abstract world. 

In his latest solo exhibition titled ‘Atmosphere,’ Roxas painted an abstract world where, according to distinguished art critic Reuban Ramas Cañete, “the faint memory of landscapes rendered into strokes and planes, articulated by a horizontal line that divides upper and lower regions of the canvas into semiotically tempting comparisons with earth and sky; or of an ordered series of lines that float on top of desolate planet-like satellites surveying its surface” is ever-present.

Layered in various textures and set in a monochromatic palette with hints of blue, red, brown, or green, Roxas’ paintings feature gestural and raw strokes in black-and-white washes, shadow-like forms, and geometric lines seemingly suspended in an atmospheric landscape. Some of his works boasts of levitating circles. Roxas says the circles are significant for they unify his opuses and denote an ultimate realization of the principles of yin and yang. 

Also perceptible in the abstractionist’s oeuvre is the use of elegant contrasts, seen in how Roxas is able to juxtapose and fuse western aesthetic elements of abstraction with its oriental counterpart. Notice how there seems to be a Zen-like vibe emanating from Roxas’ modernist works. Cañete also critiques, “Seeing Atmosphere as both traditional nature and modernist culture blurs such tidy comparisons and liberates the mind to speculate on the possibilities inaugurated by synthesizing and transforming dualities into new visualities.” 

 

For Roxas, art’s first seduction was discovering he had an ability to draw objects and that he can furnish them with life and motion. That seduction remains steadfast in the artist. Only now, Roxas is not just able to create forms and figures and give them life — he is able to make them reach atmospheric and unparalleled artistic heights.

OCTOBER 19, 2009