Printmaker and painter Pamela Yan-Santos took the counsel of her husband-artist José John Santos III to "seek and look from within" because she was having a difficult time figuring out how to jumpstart her life as an artist. As a result, things came into full circle and she went on to have a prolific and inspired career that could be the envy of some.

The fruits of her laborious work, in fact, can be visibly seen now more than ever as she has recently been chosen to be conferred as one of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists. But more than that, what Santos found in the recesses of her soul led and rallied her to create artworks upon artworks straight from her heart—sincere and unpretentious in more ways than one.

Growing up in a family of business-minded people, Pam never knew what it is in the arts that attracted her. She just knew that she enjoyed finger-painting and playing with mud as a kid. I’m guessing it’s the unusual yet comforting sensation of the paint and the velvety texture of the mud that got her hooked. It was also probably the feeling of creating something out of nothing using her hands that captured Pam. And although she liked cooking too, the pull of arts and crafts was much stronger. It also helped that she was more exposed to art activities during her elementary days back in Jose Abad Santos Memorial School (JASMS).

“The education I got in JASMS was geared towards the arts and extra-curricular activities rather than academics. If there were school plays, I was part of those in charge to make the backdrops. And I didn’t know then that I’d pursue art later on but it’s always been something that I adored doing when I was young,” Pam says. “I also found myself attending summer art workshops. At wala na akong ibang alam gawin kapag summer kung hindi sumali sa mga ganun.”

When Pamela finished elementary and transferred to the School of the Holy Spirit, her artsy-fartsy side waned for a while, for her new school’s approach was very scholastic. But the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Fine Arts reciprocated Pamela’s enthusiasm for the arts. She felt rightfully at home. UP gave her back her freedom to do what she pined for. She wholeheartedly embraced her college life and was always up on her toes whenever she and her classmates were given visual problems to solve by their professors.

Pam adds, “It felt great to be amongst classmates and peers that shared with me the same passion. And the feeling of being able to come up with solutions to the visual problems we were given using our own visual language is such a natural high. ‘Yung tipong kahit hindi mo ma-explain verbally pero kitang-kita sa trabaho mo,iba siya. Ang sarap.”

But what sorely influenced Pam’s technique and aesthetics is the printmaking process, which she learned in Fil dela Cruz’s class. Little did Pam know that printmaking would be the soul of her oeuvre; she didn’t anticipate it despite growing up to the sights and sounds of a small printing press run by her family outside their home. When she took up printmaking as an elective, she sort of knew what she was getting herself into. Surprised that she understood the process all along, Pam had fun making rubbercut prints and serigraphs.

Now, Pam has combined her mastery of the printmaking with her love for painting. Her mixed media pieces can be mistaken as large printouts, what with their noticeably and curious print-like quality. Hers are works ingenuously done by layering images and texts to create the final picture—much similar to the method of printmaking wherein an artist has to align several key blocks to make one decent print.

Incorporating the print process in the act of painting for Pam was simply to make do with her limited access to the print room and machines in UP. She no longer taught there and she had no way to continue on with the tedious process. She was lucky though because her first mixed media show generated positive raves from the people who saw it.

Interestingly enough, it’s not only Pam’s elaborate art-making process used in her optically deceiving opuses that rendered her good reviews but also her humble and honest reflections and epiphanies as a woman, a wife, and a mother. Documenting her life and her son Juno’s growth and development, Pam’s works on canvases from her first solo show to her fifth exhibition are a visual diary that speaks volumes of how she welcomed new phases in her life with Juno and husband John. She loves being a hands-on mother and savors every moment she spends with her family.

“The themes of my shows weren’t deliberate. I just took the drive from John’s advice na humugot ka lang sa loob mo kasi ‘pag humugot ka doon at honest ka sa nararamdaman mo, tuloy-tuloy na yan. That’s what I did,” Pam explains. “After this [Going Places, her fifth show], I wouldn’t know what to do next.”

But getting to know Pam, even for a short while, had me thinking that whichever artistic path fate would lead her, she will be most likely paint the things closest to her heart and those that purge the emotions.

Why? For the artist, art is like a built-in psychiatrist: it wheedles out what you can’t explain and provides solutions to your problems in the most profound way.