|
THE ARTS OF
BERT BALLADARES |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Edilberto “Bert” Ramientos Balladares
"Bert" believes that an artist is not born to reproduce nature but to
interact with it. To interact is to be creative: to be creative demands
discipline: and to be disciplined obliges learning, understanding and
patience. It is also his belief that artists paint the light of the
impressionists while searching alternative possibilities in experimental
art (Sotopatism). And also his belief that artists need respect not
humiliation, he needs freedom not curtailment; he needs exploration not
stagnation.
The 32 year-old painter Edilberto R. Balladares world is a world very
typical his age raising a family of a wife and two young sons in Dipolog
City, Zamboanga del Norte.
The only difference is that Bert Balladares is a painter and a promising
visual artist at that. His simple and humble dwelling with garden made out
of indigenous materials is complimenting with the paintings he is creating
– genre scenes of the rural places of Zamboanga del Norte, including
landscapes, and historical structures. White some painters would venture
to paint these subjects in their workshop or studios, Balladares painted
most of his pictures on the spot in the manner of
impressionism/expressionism. With this subjects for his arts and the way
he expresses them very raw and rustic, his pictures are able to
evoke the naturalness and the unsophisticated scenes and
atmosphere of his province. More so, with the 15 pieces of his
experimentation using indigenous art materials of toyo, suka and
tongog on the canvases where one is inclined to mistake them for
being the works of a folk artist, unschooled and unaware of the
contemporary art materials. These experiment pieces are monochromatic
and they are very unusual with the way the artist incorporated branches
of shrubs or trees to substitute conventional frames to facilitate the
hanging of the said pieces. They looked very native and can be
identified with Balladares and the Province of Zamboanga del Norte.
One can find Balladares during weekends in the rural areas painting on the spot and sketching for the monochromatic pieces he was working on indigenous art materials. He begins his day from Monday to Friday working at the Zamboanga del Norte Convention and Exhibition Center. He is maintaining the Provincial Museum and Art Gallery on casual basis. He works on his paintings especially his experimentation with indigenous art materials after office hours, but before that he attends first his garden. This routine is broken whenever he attends the meetings of the Dipolog Artist Consortium, Inc. which he became a member in 1977. His works are
reflective of the environment of
his province that must have started to imprint in the memory of his
early childhood at the age of seven and ten, becoming later a part of
his consciousness as a young man and even up to the present time. But
the most remarkable event of his childhood of seven years old as when he
was sent by his parents to stay with his uncle in the town of Mutia,
Zamboanga del Norte, Balladares studied his elementary grades in this
said town, hiking through coconut grooves, corn fields and hills covered
with camote and cassava to and from his class. There were no motor
vehicles in this interior part of town. We saw him drawing the scenes
and objects that he saw around his surroundings. The pastime kept him occupied since he did not have anybody his age to play with. The house of his uncle and Aunt who are both public school teaches is very far from their nearest neighbor. The only son of his Uncle and Aunt was a college student in the city. The young student who was
learning how to draw and sketch by himself had to be resourceful. He had
to use the back sheets of his grade school paper after being returned by
his teaches. Using new sheets of paper for his art lessons, he would be
reprimanded by his Uncle for being wasteful. It was this event in his
early life that made him closer to nature and the way of life of the
people of the rural areas of Zamboanga del Norte. The event too taught
him that early how to be creative with his pencil and paper. Left alone
most of the time in the solitude of that remote Barangay of Mutia,
Zamboanga del Norte, he began to weave a world of a child, a world of
trees, birds, fruits, hills, nipa shacks, children, old men and women.
With his experience in drawing, he studied Architectural Drafting at the
Zamboanga del Norte School of Arts and Trade (now Jose Rizal Memorial
College Dipolog), the same school where he finished his high school. In 1987 Balladares studied at the University of the Visayas in B.S. Architecture, but he did not complete the course after studying for two years. He married to a long time fiancé and had to find a stable job to support a family that he started. We saw him in 1990 working for a corporation that was into export home furnishings. He was painting various subjects and in different styles and he was turning in volume of these kinds of pieces for his
company. This experience of his from 1990 up to 1996 gave him the
working knowledge, a young painter like him needed. He is not only
comfortable with oils, acrylic and watercolors, his versatility goes as
far as manipulating materials to create exquisite crafts. But this stint
of his in this company was not keeping him at ease. He invited the
freedom of his other artist friends from Cebu Art Association where he
became a member. His artist friends from this mentioned association were
enjoying their artistic freedom. He was not enjoying painting subjects
and styles not of his liking. He discovered that he is not suited to be
part of a corporate machine. Edilberto R. Balladares was missing and
longing the freedom and the rustic nature of his youth in Zamboanga del
Norte. He resigned from his job and heed home with his wife and two
young sons in Dipolog City.
Early part of 1996, he turned the house of his mother into a workshop
for the many works he was doing as a commercial artist. He had to be
practical since he was supporting a growing family. In between these
commissioned works, he indulged in the kind of art that are all of his
liking, like the style of impressionism/expressionism and his invention
using indigenous are materials.
became a member of the Dipolog Artists Consortium, Inc.. On November 23
– 26, 1999, we saw him conducting a workshop to the participants of the
Second National Visual Arts Congress in Dipolog City on how to use
toyo,
suka, and tongog on the canvas as an alternative art
materials for art making and early part of the year 2000, an art piece
of his in the same indigenous are material was chosen by the National
Commission for Culture and Arts to participate with the other
thirty-four visual artists of the country in the Sung-Duan Traveling
Exhibit. This exhibit is traveling all the regions of the country. On
November 4, 2000 this son of Zamboanga del Norte is proud to present to
his provincemates in his first solo exhibition *Anak ng Zamboanga
del Norte” forty
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
