BY JAY BAUTISTA
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| I See Them Bloom, 2017 |
“Employing
the air-brush technique in watercolor, he paints in a highly realistic, almost
photographic style but situates it within a geometric scheme using multiple
points of view.”
Art critic Alice Guillermo describing Rhythm of Cloth Production, Jaime Gubaton’s
winning piece in ArtPetron National Student Art Competition in 2002.
If his first grand prize win in a national
student art competition were to be his milestone, 36 year-old Jaime Gubaton has
had a remarkable artistic journey for almost half of his life now.
It is quite appropriate for his third solo
exhibition to be aptly titled Home as Gubaton waxes sentimental and dabbles
into nostalgia by revisiting his past imaginative drives and employing these
previous visual styles by painting them in a grand manner resulting in these recent
works.
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| Field of Dreams |
For Gubaton, every painting undergoes a long and
arduous process; every line, hue and a gesture on canvas applies with it time well-spent
perfecting that approach. Style-wise, Gubaton considers himself a realist by
tradition despite the prevalent expressionist tendencies of his contemporaries.
Yet it still is his being a bygone romantic that they cannot imbibe. With his
subdued colors reminiscent of earth tones in art nouveau strokes, Gubaton is an
old soul dwelling in a city. As a quaint artist, he fondly surveys his
surroundings and directly responds to his observations by his affection and
distinct dabs of paint.
A literal going back to one’s sources, Home incorporates his gears, flowers and
birds—be it pigeons, lovebirds, or maya-maya--in
organic, endemic and substantial circumstances. Separately they seem iconic yet
belonging together they morph into a new pictorial vocabulary by recombining
them.
Gubaton depicts the
images as realistic as possible--working at his bare graphical mode as an
illustrator: a radiant face of a loved one be it his lovely wife or children
surrounded emanating with beauty such as birds, flowers and butterflies, they
are his constant testimonials to a life still worth existing.
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| Journey, 2017 |
Indulging in his
iconography, ever the positive his gears slowly long for progress, as he
counters the urban decay we have been slowly grinding into. His pigeons remind
him when they used to live with his father-in-law who breeds them on the building
rooftop. Balancing nature and technology, a striking image of these winged
beauties perched on electric posts would win for Gubaton a place in the Metrobank
Art and Design Excellence (MADE) in the Painting category; that nature maybe in
peril but there is inherent goodness in all of us. Manila may still be noble
and ever loyal despite its grim uncertainty abounded with shanties.
Gubaton’s color schemes mingle well with his Magrittean
compositions. Depending on his theme, it is either predominantly gray or sepia
in mood. He subdues his colors with preference to mixing complimentary colors
in sync with his shy demeanor. Not straight from the tube, he is too familiar
with the behavior of his paints. Sometimes he favors acrylic that is hard to do
with oil and vice versa.
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| I Say Hello, 2017 |
When the main subject has been rendered and
dried up, he then adds the geometrical patterns, and fine linear renderings,
although by definition he engages in them reminiscent of Arturo Luz. A master in composition, his houses may even
be inverted in topsy-turvy delight yet Gubaton is meticulous in locating their
firm balance, even placing grids to situate them as he has always been highly
conceptual and controlled in his metaphors.
Layers have been Gubaton’s trademark evident in
his winning in ArtPetron and the DPC DPC Visual Arts Competition.
They have always been there, it has been his one foot in the contemporary art
scene, Enhancing his foreground by using shadows in his background he has heavily
favored optical illusions like repeated refrains in a song.
Charming titles reflect the timeless elegies Gubaton
has crafted: For Your Eyes Only, Hello
Sunshine and You Say Goodbye. He
is ever pious not brash or harsh as viewed in his pieces. They evoke a
domesticated feeling or a visual flow having a unified aesthetic presence
integrated from its simple coherence of his oeuvre understood by the interplay
of his experienced painting principles. Often mistaken as print because of its
smoothness, he counters his brush technique textured (impasto) in acrylic yet
he finishes in oil.
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| You Say Goodbye, 2017 |
Home is beyond stoic
structures and spick and span surroundings, it is an amalgam resonating a
semblance of family, security, and intimacy. It is induces comfort, belonging
and harmony looking long and hard. It is Gubaton at his prowess as a painter;
it is soft and sheer painting to the hilt. In Home, Gubaton has come full circle it is as if he never left.
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