Test The Limits Of Your Imagination
By Edwin Wilwayco
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 08:35am (Mla time) 05/12/2008
MANILA, Philippines--From my religious and God-centered parents, I learned discipline, reverence, caring, faith, love and humility. Being the eldest of seven has been both a tough and a rewarding experience.
When it was my turn to be a parent, I learned, as did my wife, to be constantly aware of being a positive model for our only child. Our daughter, Moma, will turn 14 in August. Her voice and smile radiate upon our whole being. Because of her, we have become wondering wanderers in this mystifying and magical world of parenthood.
I have always exposed my daughter to my work so she would see how I make a living.
I've learned to balance fatherhood and art, that it is important not to let my painting overshadow my family commitments.
Discovery
For me, painting is discovery. Every time you make a mark on the canvas, all sorts of possibilities open up — and all sorts of problems as well for which you have to find solutions. When you take brush to canvas, you never know exactly the results paint is going to make.
The tension of always trying to push yourself over the edge, of testing the limits of your imagination in the hope of creating impressions distinctly your own and quite beyond anything you expected when you started out—that is where the challenge and beauty of the act of painting is for me.
I start with no preconception when I stand before my canvas. I let things develop according to my feelings, my moods, especially those in which I find myself when I get up in the morning. Sometimes I'm in an extremely happy mood, sometimes I'm not.
When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. I just go with the flow. It is an easy give and take, pure harmony, until the painting is done.
I have no fears of making changes, destroying the image, adding, erasing, putting back. I try to let it come through.
I think there is something I am still working out in my paintings. The process began without my knowing it. It is a struggle for me to both discard and retain what is gestural and what is personal “signature.” Gesture must appear out of necessity, not habit.
I don't start with a color order, but find the colors as I go. The whole business of spotting, the small areas of color in the big or small canvas, how the edges meet, how accidents are controlled—all these things still fascinate me.
The colors in my paintings are juxtaposed for various and changing effects. They are supposed to challenge or to echo each other, to support or oppose one another.
(Edwin Wilwayco says he has never been good with words. “I'm better at drawing pictures." What better proof than his artwork in photo? Four Last Songs VI, oil on canvas, 51 x 57 inches, is from the artist's recent Scherzo series of musical canvases inspired by Strauss. The artist has mounted exhibits internationally.)