Drawn Paintings
Elaine Roberto-Navas
02 April – 17 May 2009
Curated by
02 April – 17 May 2009
In Elaine Roberto-Navas’ drawings, these are enunciated in the scraggly, threadlike, ruminating lines that coil into a wiry armature: fortified by its densely pressed imprimatura of charcoal and ink, upon which her buttery pigments would be draped and soon, given more verve and fleshed out into a corporeal surface of its very essence.
Her subject matter is, what Barthes terms and as can be comparably called, her empire of things, which she holds familiar dominion over, capturing in the very frenzied rush of her scribblings each minutiae on a pair of well-worn wheelchairs, the ingredients to a dish anticipating their transubstantiation with fire and appetite, the rusted gates of an ancestral house, the discarded toys and dolls of her offspring standing now at the threshold of adulthood.
Barthes further extrapolates this suspension as an “…infinite postponement of history.” Thus, what Roberto-Navas does to her subjects is to bestow upon them a presence that resists obsolescence despite their misshapenly slackened state as they lay vulnerable to natural weathering.
Instead of just glimpsing through the curlicues of each curvature of these forms, our gaze enables us to retrace Roberto-Navas’ close examination of her subjects, as to follow the welling and hollowing of their forms; and where these lines knot and unravel, so too, we read the plot of these memories presented as shorthand entries to her visual diary. Yet these are but intimations to her whole autobiography. We are indulged, however, in the ‘loving embrace’ of her subjects: emblematic of her tenacious hold on the precarious passing of time, shedding layers of our mortality.
About the Artist
About the Artists
It is with timelessness that Elaine Roberto-Navas (b. 1964) works her brush and palette over canvas. With subjects ranging from flowers to furniture, from the sky to water, she paints with oil in thick strokes; the object appears swathed in movement. Still life or landscape as they may be considered, they move with each glance, and if you stare, the motion starts to permeate outside the four corners of her paintings. What Roberto-Navas captures in her work is not merely an object in nature, but its spirit in movement, and together with her technique, artistry, and will, her paintings exist in a timelessness that might outlive us all, yet carry our humanity onwards.
Elaine Roberto-Navas graduated with BA in Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University (1985), and a Fine Arts degree, Major in Painting from the University of the Philippines (1991). Roberto-Navas has received various awards including the Jurors’ Choice Awards from the Art Association of the Philippines (1994, 1995), the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards (1995), and the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Singapore Art Awards (2002). She has shown at the Ayala Museum, Silverlens Gallery, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Art Informal, West Gallery, UP Vargas Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and Valentine Willie Fine Art in Singapore to name a few.
Related Exhibitions
About the Artists
About the Artist
It is with timelessness that Elaine Roberto-Navas (b. 1964) works her brush and palette over canvas. With subjects ranging from flowers to furniture, from the sky to water, she paints with oil in thick strokes; the object appears swathed in movement. Still life or landscape as they may be considered, they move with each glance, and if you stare, the motion starts to permeate outside the four corners of her paintings. What Roberto-Navas captures in her work is not merely an object in nature, but its spirit in movement, and together with her technique, artistry, and will, her paintings exist in a timelessness that might outlive us all, yet carry our humanity onwards.
Elaine Roberto-Navas graduated with BA in Psychology from Ateneo de Manila University (1985), and a Fine Arts degree, Major in Painting from the University of the Philippines (1991). Roberto-Navas has received various awards including the Jurors’ Choice Awards from the Art Association of the Philippines (1994, 1995), the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards (1995), and the Honorable Mention from the Philip Morris Singapore Art Awards (2002). She has shown at the Ayala Museum, Silverlens Gallery, Finale Art File, MO_Space, Art Informal, West Gallery, UP Vargas Museum, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and Valentine Willie Fine Art in Singapore to name a few.
Related Exhibitions
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