Photo by Pinggot Zulueta

Photo by Pinggot Zulueta

Painter-printmaker Jan Olympus Salvador Delacruz, 27, is one young artist whose grand aim is to have lasting art works – with prints and paintings – 50 or more years after he has created them.

During his fourth one man show at the Crucible Gallery, SM Megamall, in Mandaluyong, entitled "Arkadia," (Greek’s mythical forest), which opened on February 18, the young Delacruz showed art works inspired by stained glass and religious images, like his depiction of the Holy Trinity; by Greek mythology, like his Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, when nurtured by a she-wolf; by modern society’s monumental growth, like his work of man and his machine.

“I always include humor in my art works,” he says, but one has to look hard for them – in the maze of his serious images. “In this show, instead of Utopia, I focused on modern society,” he says, hinting that his arcane images are all about man navigating existential realities and aspiration for greatness – with the help of the divine power. Here's an excerpt of his interview with Manila Bulletin (MB).

Peripatetic drawer

MB: You seem like a peripatetic drawer, unlike many young Filipino artists today who are satisfied with found objects, installation, and performance art. Why?

JOSD: I was six when I started drawing. My father (printmaker-painter) Fil Delacruz would always tell me the words of (French engraver, illustrator, and sculptor) Paul Gustave Dore’: ‘A day without lines is a day wasted.’ (Dore’, his idol, lived from 1832-1883).

Since printmaking and painting have become my passion, drawing, for me, has become a compulsion, a habit, or like having a meal. It’s part of my life.

The only way for me to sleep is to draw on my small (lap) easel while lying on my bed. My bed is always littered with drawings. And when I wake up in the morning, I’m already holding a brush (or working on a print). Breakfast in bed or painting in bed are almost the same, with me.

I work the whole day in a studio I share with my father at home (in Soldiers Hills Villlage, Muntinlupa). I always have my sketch pad with me. (Art-making for JOSD is almost eight hours a day, six days a week)

Impact of Printmaking

MB: Do you think that your signature work ethic and discipline in drawing came from your early training in printmaking? Is it a school thing, too?

JOSD: I really studied print-making extensively. Up to now, I’m still studying it – its techniques. I have a working knowledge about relief printing, which is done with rubber and wood cut; about intaglio, like etching or aquatint done on copper plate; planographic printing, or lithograph done on limestone (from Germany).

I was introduced to printmaking for the first time when I was a high school student at San Beda Alabang (then known as St. Benedict College).

When my father was president of the Philippine Association of Printmakers (PAP) from 1990 to 2000, I was then four and 14. He always brought me with him at PAP’s workshop at the back of the Folk Arts Theater (on Manila’s Roxas Boulevard).

(PAP was founded by Manuel Rodriguez in 1968. It has 100 members). For me, PAP is like my atelier. I grew up learning from my father and other great print makers in the Philippines. PAP has etching and lithographic presses. At home, my father and I share the same kind of presses in our studio.

MB: How about your school?

JOSD: I graduated from the college of Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas in 2006.

MB: The images of your paintings and your prints tend to look alike. Should there be a difference between the images produced in the two medium that you work on?

JOSD: I usually work separately on both medium every other day.

Unlike many Filipino contemporary artists today

MB: Why aren’t you into the so-called unorthodox and passionate expressions done by Filipino contemporary artists?

JOSD: I respect other art makers of my generation. I can say each to his own. But honestly, I can’t see my artworks in photos (like documented installation and performance art). I want my art works hanging on the wall. I want them to age and last 50 (or more) years from now.

Depicting Social Reality without Politics, but with Aspiration

MB: You are into figurative or representational art, but you seem to shy away from intensifying the searing nature of life’s reality. Why?

JOSD: You can’t ask a kid to draw images of social realism. But I draw about social reality – with serious subject matter - from the point of view of a kid. My color-palette looks like a children’s book.

MB: Are you consciously doing that or you are following (in art) your philosophy in life – about being inspirational?

JOSD: For me, I draw from life’s reality but the artist should not dwell only on the negative aspects of that reality. One has to have humor and a positive outlook in life.

MB: Where is this positive pole coming from? Why are you inspirational?

JOSD: I live in a household full of possibilities. My grandfather Edil Delacruz from Hagonoy, Bulacan was fisherfolk; my grandmother Carmen was a school teacher. But their children rose from that. My parents (including mother Marlou, a nurse who went to the United States in 2004) naiahon kami sa middle class. My brother Modesto “Dax” and I graduated from college. These things have helped me attain a positive outlook in life.

MB: Are you saying that the departure of your mother for the US has not made a psychological  impact on you and did not affect the images of your art works at all?

JOSD: When it happened, my dad, brother, and I had a stronger relationship. Instead of a rectangle, our relationship (began) to look like a triangle, with my dad at the top.

MB: How are you with your father and brother?

JOSD: I grew up under my father’s influence. My brother and I complement each other. He’s a people person. Throw him into a crowded place, and everyone would be his friends. I work alone. In a crowded place, it’s hard for me to talk.

Art Exhibits

His paintings of people in his subdivision, depicted as part human, part comic characters were part of a group show with his father, master printmaker Fil Delacruz, and “flower-painter” Angelica Jamlang at the Philippine Consulate Center in New York for two weeks in March 2012. Collectors commissioned him for prints from 2009 to 2010.

He held an exhibit of prints whose images were culled from his arsenal of drawings (done almost every day), at Artists Gallery in BF Paranaque in 2008.

He exhibited 30 etchings of people moving in and out the city - to a destination (with a purpose), in a show entitled “Tales in the Big City,” at the Crucible gallery in 2006, when he was a fourth year college student.

His surreal and autobiographical sketches (from his drawing-journals) made a debut at the Madrigal Arts Center, in Alabang town center in 2000, when he was 14.

His Awards  

A lithograph entitled “Hari ng Kamaynilaan,” (portraying a man with a crown, and the city at his back), won first prize in the Art Association of the Philippines’ (AAP) printmaking category, in 2006.

A digital work, “Tulog Na, Nena,” (illustrating an overseas Filipino worker (OFW), with a rosary worn like a noose around her neck), won second price in Shell’s student art competition in 2006.

In 2005, his lithograph entitled “Bulong sa Panaginip,”(depicting a man’s mouth with a rising sun, at the foreground of a rich landscape of birds, plants, and water), was PAP’s first prize in print competition.

"Arcadia" by Janos Delacruz runs until March 3, 2013 at the Crucible Gallery, 4th Level, SM Megamall. For inquiries, call (02) 635-6061.