Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Galicano has an arsenal of rich approaches to the universal theme of treescapes. This sweetly melancholy painting seems to occupy a borderline between everyday observation and a visionary world all Galicano’s own. With a robust, post impressionistic style Galicano looks to the remote landscapes of his imagination to inspire his moods and richly textured paintings. Galicano is a painter of tonalist landscapes that is renowned especially for his vast, sweeping views of nature. The natural setting of trees and flowers also romanticizes the subject. To intrigue the eye, Galicano surprisingly adds a little mystique of abstract illusionism — a painted vertical line of pure color cutting across a realistic country scene — an act of conjuring has been performed. In practice, art and magic are remarkably similar. When a painter persuades us to believe in something that is actually not there.