Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

As one of the foremost portraitists working today, Winner Jumalon departs from the usual descriptive technique and instead relies on loose brushstrokes, painterly style, and undertones of symbolism that what the viewer sees on the canvas is not only the image of a person but a measure of her personality. In this work, Bather Series, one sees these artistic commitments amplified. Having just emerged from her ablution, a woman seems already exasperated at the start of her day. Her hair still dripping wet and festooned with dark ribbons (with one throwing a shadow near her shoulder blade), she has yet to work up the resolve to join society; her dishevelment is both defiance and accusation. Floating on the pictorial surface are marbled shapes and glyphs — symbols that have already become part and parcel of Jumalon’s visual vocabulary. It is a deeply reflective work that generates its mystery in its depiction of ennui and extreme vulnerability.\