If the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is universally acceptable, it can thus be said that there’s real beauty in the “morbid” canvases of the young painter in bloom, Ms. Camille Jean Verdelaire D. de la Rosa.
BY NOEL SALES BARCELONA
Correspondent
Bulatlat
CULTURE
If the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is universally acceptable, it can thus be said that there’s real beauty in the “morbid” canvases of the young painter in bloom, Ms. Camille Jean Verdelaire D. de la Rosa.
She now departs from her usual themes of gardens, landscapes and “real” people. The 26-year-old impressionist artist, Ms. Camille de la Rosa, escapes from the “happy” faces and places of her artistic world.
With torn flesh, skulls, and distorted faces, combined with beasts’ body parts, De La Rosa’s canvases now bleed with different moods and expression of the human face – thus remaking the concept of beauty, of dreaming, of chaotic and peaceful realities.
Unknown to many, De La Rosa’s inclination toward the surreal isn’t new. She began to paint the bizarre in the early 2000s while she was introducing herself to the world of expressionism. She even won an award for her work then, she told this writer when he paid a visit to her home at the back of one of the oldest universities in Mandaluyong.
A compound statement of artistic genius
Her Hordes of Charlatan is a compound statement of how brilliant and what a genius the painter is. It is both a philosophical and a political statement. It is about how she views the world, in its entirety and particularities, and how she reexamines the relationships of humans to each other and to the world.
De La Rosa’s Hordes of Charlatan (Contributed photo)
The piece was exhibited at the SM Megamall, at the S.O.N.A. Group exhibition spearheaded by another great artist, Joel “Welbart” Bartolome, which ran from Dec. 28, 2008 to Jan. 5, 2009.
“It’s a statement about greed and quackery,” De la Rosa thus describes her work of interlocking bones, overlapping skulls, multi-legs, and phantom-like images. Greed is now the wheel driving this society of ours and the author will not disagree with how it was depicted in De la Rosa’s pieces.
In today’s society, politicians are not leaders but undertakers; judges are guardians of sepulchers; the businessmen are worms eating the flesh.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the painter had put into her painting all the elements of what “human society” is today and how the human mind is being molded by the decaying culture of greed, selfishness, and of the praise of money.
However, Hordes of Charlatan, which can be considered as one of De la Rosa’s magnum opuses, can be interpreted in many other ways.
The mystical and the mythical
The skull with the cross-bones is not actually a symbol of death but rather of life. As the Apostle Paul said, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53).
It is by the death of Christ (crossbones) in the Mountain of Skulls (Golgotha) that everyone who believes is being restored into his or her original state, as the Apostle Paul told the Romans: “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living” (14:9).
