THE FIRST thing you notice about Ruben de Jesus? works is their colors. Reds, blues and blacks are rendered in various and unexpected hues that play around light and shadow and emphasis.

But up close, you realize these are pen-and-ink, and ?Simpleng Buhay, Simpleng Kulay? (running at the Alcove, Filipinas Heritage Library, Makati Avenue) is not as simple as its title sounds.

De Jesus said he had wanted all along to detail the simple life. Each of the 12 framed artworks?six in blue and black, six in red and black?focuses on a particular moment in rural life. Each work tries to rescue from oblivion a specific aspect of the simple life that might have been forgotten amid urban progress and development.

A teacher of Visual Communications at the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman, De Jesus said he was surrounded by the swift changes wrought by technology. Going for the simple in subject matter and in medium seemed the best path for him to define and practice his art.

So he gives the viewer particular moments of the simple life, where men and women work the farm and children do household chores; where men take care of the chicken and feed the pigs; where a child passes the time on the rooftop; and where a man walks by a river amid rain.

The images of simplicity are complemented by the simplicity of the medium? pen and ink. Shade, texture and depth work together to achieve imagery that?s multi-layered and multi-dimensional.

Of course, the simplicity conceals complexity, especially since the works tackle reminiscence and nostalgia: They are records of a vanished world.