‘Salakot at Sumbalilo’: Painting the past

FOR SOME, it might take hours of extensive narration to describe what life in the country was like before the arrival of modern technology and its revolutionary impact to the society. But by looking at the paintings of Thomasian Noli Vicedo, it would only take minutes.

In his second one-man exhibit titled Salakot at Sumbalilo last November 14 at The Podium, Vicedo gives his audience a feel of the old rural life with his paintings depicting Filipino townsfolk going about with their daily business.

The particular theme is inspired by the painter’s childhood years in Alfonso, Cavite during the 1960s, when he farmed with his grandparents. The exhibit was made with the intention of preserving these memories.

“This is not just a tribute to my childhood, but this is also my creative celebration of the old rural life that the latest generation never had the opportunity to experience, especially for my children,” Vicedo, an advertising professor in the College of Fine Arts and Design, told the Varsitarian.

By manifesting the simple joys of rural life in his paintings, Vicedo has underscored the complications of the present day.

Glorified in gloss

Vicedo refrains from his habit of adopting the usual oil and acrylic as his artistic medium for this exhibit, relying on the bright hues of gouache, an opaque watercolor paint with a gum-like base, to turn a cut-and-dried portrait of a laboring farmer into something rich and festive.

“Gouache is not really my kind of medium, these artworks are just a rest from using my major mediums [oil and acrylic], once in a while an artist needs to take a break,” Vicedo said.

A total of 50 paintings are unified by the ubiquitous image of the salakot, a traditional hat with a wide brim entirely covering the heads of the characters depicted in the paintings, hence lessening the amount of detail that ought to be drawn into the canvas.

The artist was not too keen on detail for this set of paintings, resulting in an oversimplification of his illustrations, but made his works no less than refreshing for their beholders.

Like a page entirely ripped off a coloring book, this certain technique has freed up a lot of space in the canvas that is easily flushed with bright shades of the basic colors. The background is enriched with waves of the same radiant hues that painted the characters in the picture, which eventually results into a sunny rendering of the rural life.

In Sorbetero, a rainbow-colored ice cream cart blends in fittingly with the multihued background. The same impression is also shared in Mama Mary wherein the varying colors in the illustration itself somewhat interact with the stripes in the background. Meanwhile, Fruit Vendor defines itself with having an overload of colors in the entire gouache collection, juxtaposing the bright shades with the dark ones.

By carefully measuring which tint he is going to flush his painting with next, Vicedo has not only made a fitting tribute to the lifestyle that has long disappeared, but has also proven that an exaggeration of details is not necessary for an artwork to achieve an eye-catching quality. Vicedo has kept his work process straight and simple which produces a tribute that effectively encompasses the memory of rural life he wishes to capture.