Literature: Christiane L. de la Paz, Private Collections, Artes de las Filipinas, Quezon City, 2009, p. 297 (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

In Contemporary Philippine Art, there have been very few names that have been able to establish themselves on an international level. Among the most popular of them today is Marina Cruz. Marina Cruz has featured an assortment of styles over her years of progression and evolution; notably her hyperrealist renditions of blouses and dresses with stitches, her perspective renditions of indoor spaces, even her darker, more impressionistic earlier works. This very work by Cruz is one of the featured pieces in her 2008 exhibit entitled ‘Recollections’. In the show, she explored the theme of memory once again. Here, in this work, she welcomes us to a scene that incorporates a similar use of space as that of what is to be her later works — her subjects, evocative of sentimentality and grace. The plays on nostalgia and reminiscence through the artist’s perspective gives us a bit of insight into her life — the emotional, the grim, the charming, even the witty aspects. This work is dated 2007, a year before her Grand Prize Win at the Philippine Art Awards, Philip Morris.