Producing award-winning and auction-friendly artists such as Larry Carumba, Abe Orobia and Marlin Lopez with world-class members like Joyce Pilarsky, Joselito Altarejos and Elvert Bañares, ARTlead’s contribution to emergent and emerging Philippine visual art is immense and far-reaching
With only the trophy and certificate designed by Bañares and Lopez in that order with no cash prize incentives involved, the remarkable response from members is so overwhelming that it has inspired present artists to activate their art, new artists to pursue it, and child artist as young as one and a half years old to join up through their parents and/or guardians.
ARTlead pursued this without financial resources. It had also expanded coverage of membership to include other branches of art such as cinema, music, architecture, dance and literature. And it has also opened ARTlead Gallery, an online gallery.
ARTlead’s present thrust asks member artists of the Facebook art group to “levitate” their art, a return to the “elitist” character of visual art, by seeking originality as its highest expression. It subscribes to the principle that the artwork is the artist’s own from conception through an original idea to deft execution of fine elements, presenting a whole that is integrated and impactful.
The group has started to embark on the publication of a hard and soft magazine known as the Lead Magazine to give members publicity and to promote art in general. The online version is currently available on Facebook.
ARTlead hopes to reach 1,000,000 people through its various formats and projects in three years’ time. ARTlead levitates itself!
Rodgie Gapayao, Rex Beo, Michael Montanez, Norbing Villez, and RK Raposas lead the shortlist as Five Lead Artists for August 2016:
RODGIE GAPAYAO. Starting late as a landscape artist, Gapayao paints effortlessly, a source of pure joy and inspiration. When he closes his eyes, memories bring back vivid scenes of never-ending shorelines, beaches at low tide, waves crashing on the sands or undulating in the seas, clouds rolling in endless skies. And then he paints a new landscape using those elements. As a Christian, he believes in God’s perfect time and plan. From meeting the right people, who guided him in pursuing and fulfilling his dreams, to those who gave him opportunities to exhibit. It is not late yet, he faithfully believes, to perfect his art.
REX BEO. An admirer of all arts, which may be the reason he is in this profession, Beo pursues it with unrelenting zeal. His dedication in preserving our country’s classic and contemporary paintings is his joy and life. But there is a difference between being an art conservator and a visual artist. While as a conservator he preserves and restores our country’s art works, as a visual artist he tries to promote art. Since his first solo exhibition 17 years ago, he tries to reinvent himself each time. After a seven-year hiatus from the public art scene, he is making a return exhibition because he misses the thrill of having a one-man show. It is also his own little way of conceiving his definition of national art.
MICHAEL MONTANEZ. Starting off as first-coater of the Master Artist of Philippine Heritage Dante Hipolito, as tutored by the latter at 17, Montanez worked after this stint as muralist in Bahrain from 2005 to 2008. Now a full-time visual artist featured in The Daily Tribune, he is active in joining group shows and art competitions. He won first prize in the PNB stamp design competition and juror’s prize in Kunts and Macuha Art Gallery national painting competition. As an artist, he wants to continue the discovery as art is a nonstop learning process to attain that elusive original style that all well-meaning artists seek.
NORBING VILLEZ. Villez’s decision to grab the opportunity of immigrating and try to work abroad put him through almost eight years of art inactivity. He now manages to find time to pursue his passion by accepting commissioned works as his stress reliever after a night shift at work. Then he joined Facebook art groups like ARTlead and got featured in The Daily Tribune. After contacting his old fellow artists back home, he started painting again. Sending artworks to the Philippines, he became visible in exhibits again. For him it’s like being reborn – with the happiness, the success, that feeling of pride to come alive anew in the art circles.
Elevated as ARTlead Hall Famers of August 2016 are Jaime Torres, Larry Carumba, Marlin Lopez, and Aljus Andres.
JAIME TORRES. Torres’ visions are born out of the unpredictability of imagination and wide-eyed dreams. Advocating inspiration and encouraging creativity in others, he finds beauty in everything. And to enjoy the process of discovering minute ideas around him, he accepts and respects images and visions of other artists. Self-schooled in multimedia, his limited digital knowledge works to his advantage as this new tool needs imagination and ideas. What he does not know widens his freedom to express himself as he sees it.
LARRY CARUMBA. Born to a less privileged life, Carumba is a self-taught artist of the new generation of Filipino artists outside the Philippines. The lack of education to pursue his passion for art did not hinder his mission to succeed. On what God has tasked him to do in life, his years of hard work as painter captured hearts, admiration and the respect of the art society in the Middle East and elsewhere including prestigious publications like The Daily Tribune. He successfully demonstrates the beauty and quality of Filipino arts as highly competitive in the international art standard.
MARLIN LOPEZ. A self-taught and full-time visual artist from Aggub, Solano, Nueva Vizcaya, he is a degree holder of Electronics and Communications Engineering and studied two years in law school at St. Mary’s University. He is second placer in the 11th GSIS art competition in the non-representational category, Best Artist in the 2015 ARTlead competition and was featured in the Life section of The Daily Tribune. As art leads him to enlightenment, his senses are freely open for his eternal love to daughter Marie Louise Elisabeth.
ALJUS ANDRES. At first, people may think Andres as just tripping even though they would be shy to say it to his face. Still the voices of truth are screaming out. But they do not bother him at all and never will. He believes that if he lets it stay in his system, then they would say they are right and they will be always right. In their eyes and mind, he is just a fool who knows in his heart who is the foolish one.