ABOUT THE WORK

A visit by the late abstractionist Romulo Olazo to The Flower Farm in Tagaytay for a painting session with a collective of artists called The Saturday Group inspired this exceptional series where the distinct heart-shape of the pistillated foliage blends with the 'Diaphanous' style for which he is best known - transparent, overlapping, energetic gossamer shapes carefully composed on a starkly luminescent canvas. In this piece titled Diaphanous Anthuriums, form and color are fused as one in a faint but interlocked relationship, and from their union emanates a disembodied, spectral look where like a spangle of accents, the spikes, which, in fact, differentiate the anthurium from other flowering plants, teasingly swim into view, seemingly dispersed at random, but in an order that cumulatively inflects the stun of heart shapes wherein the rich, dense and complex layers of light - even in works that disport a flourish and flamboyance of forms - never lose their austere quality