In a marked and unrepentant contradistinction to the prevalent dark paintings of much contemporary art, reveling in psychological anguish and alienation, derision and disaffection, is the so-called “feel good” painting.

The category has produced works that unwaveringly pursue the Philippine genre tradition, always soundly constructed in terms of design and composition, with its dynamic rhythm and circumspect chromaticism, and with images guaranteed to put the viewer on the side of the artist.

These are the classic Filipino themes which are mainly figural: Mother and Child, harvest scenes, vendors and processions, familial and domestic settings.

Indeed, these have been the staples of such artists as Fernando Amorsolo, Vicente Manansala, and Malang, down to the second generation folk genre artists like Angelito Antonio, Norma Belleza, Antonio Austria, Mario Parial, Manuel Baldemor, and, in a surprising but well-deserved renaissance, Roger San Miguel.

After all, San Miguel has himself received expressed words of admiration from the late National Artists Vicente Manansala and J. Elizalde Navarro.

Galerie CMG, itself an emerging player on the art scene, is featuring the recent works of Roger San Miguel at SM Megamall Art Center. Titled “Seasons of Life” 2, the show is a follow-up to last year’s sold-out exhibition by the artist.

The works continue to explore the inexhaustible well of maternal love and community fellowship, the dignity of labor and the fervor of faith, the bounty of the land and the sea.

Several works on the Mother and Child theme are in the circular (tondo) format, a reference to Raphael’s Madonna and Child. The round, enveloping space embracing the two figures, themselves in each other’s arms, is a literal circle of love.

Folk archetypes

The multi-figural market scenes, on the other hand, are not so much a filmic director’s deployment of actors rehearsing their business, as visual journals of folk archetypes one remembers from childhood when we occasionally accompanied our own mothers at the weekend tiangge. Indeed, San Miguel is more an orchestrator of figures as vessels of form and color, with their deliberate use as verticals, horizontals and diagonals, which make it possible to view these works as a study in the fusion of figuration and abstraction, though admittedly not quite with the stark linearity of an Arturo Luz work.

Seasons of the Year

As close as he can veer towards abstraction, San Miguel paints a profusion of fruits in “Green Macopa,” an all-over work with no beginning, middle or end that is impliedly terminated only by the length of the burdened branches.

In terms of chromatics, too, San Miguel parallels certain colors with seasons of the year. In “Season of Gold,” sheaves of golden grains of rice spill out of a maiden’s arms, while “Season of Green,” a virtual cornucopia of native summer fruits, is a suffusion of viridian, lime, fern, forest green, avocado, ripening mangoes, and other luscious rotundities.

With the two- or three-figure paintings, San Miguel imagines his Gauguinesque maidens, slimmer somewhat, taking as much pleasure in their balletic poses as the artist was, in painting them.

Social realism

Intriguingly, and quite unexpectedly, San Miguel has introduced a strain of social realism and activism in some of the works. One work titled “Tao Po” is a glimpse of children’s eyes peering through a metal gate, orbs of innocence quickly seeing what fate and others’ better fortune have deprived them. In “The Immigrant,” a visibly distraught old provincial woman, easily one’s own grandmother, stands unsteadily, while overhead is the waving American flag. Local color, too, with its comic touches in the drawn expressions of the five wrinkled presences hamming it up in the midst of a native card game, is much in evidence in “Sotang Bastos.”

If this departure from his traditional subjects is a hint of a new direction, or a mere momentary divagation, remains to be seen. What clearly comes across, however, and the viewer can instantly sense it, is that Roger San Miguel “felt good” while painting these new works.—CONTRIBUTED

“Seasons of Life” 2 will run Feb. 28-March 11, at SM Megamall Art Center, Mandaluyong City. The exhibit is organized by Galerie CMG. Call 8719765, 0917-8293961, 0998-5917596.