Anna de Leon likes to use song lyrics in naming her artworks and her exhibitions. So when she moved to her new space, in a condo unit on the seventh floor, “it seems perfect that I name my exhibition with that song,” De Leon said as she surveyed the panoramic view which spanned the hills of Antipolo, the Laguna de Bai, leading to the skyline of Bonifacio Global City and Makati, and the distant Manila Bay.

“I placed those hills in this tryptich painting, which I also named, ‘Heaven on the Seventh Floor.’ It is my way of expressing my gratitude to God for giving me all this.”

Like her recent solo exhibitions, De Leon used birds and flowers as her visual idioms. Metal cubes, leather straps and other material associated with her other practice, interior design, are also integrated to augment the flat picture plane, and make it somewhat like a flat sculpture, like a bas relief. All the seven pieces took inspiration from the artist’s own experience. Nesting, which is a universal theme in itself as it covers love, and the tension between settling in and being caged, seems to be a common theme in all, as most works show pairs of birds in various stages of building a family and a home.

“Heaven on the Seventh Floor” ran at Galerie Francesca in Festival Mall, Alabang Muntinlupa City. Call 6592667.