FILIPINO master abstractionist Edwin Wilwayco provided a measured response when asked if he considers himself religious.
“I think so,” the global artist said, before further qualifying the question and offering a more illuminating answer. “Well, I cannot paint without praying first.”
The question stems from Wilwayco’s chosen premise for his latest solo exhibition. Opening at Arte Bettina in Greenbelt 5 this Saturday, February 8, is Magnificat Opus, where the artist renders in his masterful brand of abstract expressionism the musical setting of J.S. Bach on the biblical canticle “Song of Mary.”
Bach (1685-1750), of course, is the German composer and musician of the Baroque period who’s generally regarded as one of the all-time greats. In 1723, he was appointed as the Director of Music and Organist at a church in Leipzig, Germany. Wanting to introduce himself with a composition that would showcase his brilliant potential, Bach cut the length and difficulty of church music with something short and stunning.
The noted musician lifted the Latin text of the story of the Virgin Mary as told in the Gospel of Saint Luke. The result is Bach’s “Magnificat”, written in E-flat major and to be performed during Vespers, the evening prayer. The song is set in twelve movements/verses that last just half an hour.
The show-off piece highlights the singers’ technical mastery, with Bach treating each movement like pictures in a gallery.
That original visual approach resonates with Wilwayco, who listens to the piece and sees an expansive field, where people are moving in one direction as if to welcome someone.
“There are valleys and mountains. There’s a scene,” the artist said. “But, of course, when I do my interpretation of it, I try to avoid painting the trees.”
As with Wilwayco’s distinct body of work—marked by forcefulness of ideas through gestural strokes and layered color field exploration, a style inspired by the likes of Rothko, De Kooning and Pollock—his paintings on Bach’s “Magnificat” are devoid of figures or even traces of recognizable objects. What’s left in the compositions, therefore, is the message consumed by one man, and yet invites the interpretation of all—for what is abstract act but an interaction between the artist and his art, and his art and the audience?
Wilwayco admits to listening to Bach’s music for hours on end while creating the pieces for the show, where brush strokes paced with the rhythm of the songs. Each work showcases diverse line quality that is inspired by the music’s polyphonic personality, including lyrical lines from the artist for the composer’s preferred legatos.
That said, presented in Wilwayco’s Magnificat Opus are not mere visual translations of music, but artistic renditions of a narrative, as Bach, himself, did with the canticle “Song of Mary.”
Such venture is nothing new to Wilwayco, who started taking inspiration from classical music for his art in 2006 with the show Homage to Vivaldi, staged in New York. Since then, he has turned to the creations of Christoph Gluck and Erik Satie in exhibits mounted in the United States and here.
What’s different in the new show on Bach, however, is it marks the artist’s first foray into liturgical art. But his entry to the field has less to do with his faith, and more with his goal at this point of his artistic career.
Wilwayco, 67, has had more than 30 solo exhibitions around the world. He started drawing at the age of five when his father, a machinist, asked him to copy his sketches of people.
The younger Wilwayco obeyed and immediately found his touch. Since then, he never stopped drawing—from sketching on the sides of his test papers in elementary that prompted his teacher to confront his parents, to painting on the side of a three-decade-plus career in advertising.
Wilwayco wanted to pursue arts in college, but agreed instead to a “comprise” with his father. He entered the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts, with only a minor in painting and majoring in advertising.
It was not a hard decision, the artist said, saying he believed he can always paint.
Nonetheless, Wilwayco made the most of his time in UP and took additional subjects in painting to learn from the country’s art titans, including Constancio Bernardo, Rod Paras-Perez and Jose Joya. Under their tutelage, Wilwayco learned, among countless lessons, how to correct rather than erase, and how no color is unpleasant.
“I saw them mix colors without fear,” he said. “Para bang ’yung kulay, parang pancit na niluluto. Walang tapon.”
Wilwayco’s art career, however, didn’t have the smoothest of starts. He was eventually advised to apply for a British Council Scholar for Painting and ended up studying at the West Surrey College of Art and Design in England for six months. There, he received a career-altering suggestion to focus his art on Philippine peculiarities, and he chose to go with the jeepney.
That’s how Wilwayco’s Jeepney Fantasia Series in 1989 got in motion, which towed his career to a path of redemption. From then on, he mounted one solo exhibit after another, along with countless group exhibitions—all the while working in advertising.
Wilwayco maintains that after everything he’s been through, with all the things he has achieved, the very thing he still chases in painting to this day is the feeling that made him fall in love in the first place.
“Painting is discovery,” he said. “It always is every time I hold a brush and spread on the color—whether on the first or third stroke, the joy of seeing something there that I didn’t notice before, that sense of excitement, that sense of discovery.”
He likened the rush from his days exploring the forest as a child, parting bushes and never knowing what tree or what rock awaited from the cleared view.
It’s a feeling that makes him dream of visiting the Amazon one day, which is one of his many goals, including a plan to present his 1979 The Flag Series in a new light one of the days, the same way how he revisited his breakthrough Jeepney series two years ago.
For now, Wilwayco is simply thankful for the present and wishes one thing for the future: “I’m just grateful that I’m still alive and I hope I can still paint.”