Auspicious by MONNAR BALDEMOR

Auspicious by MONNAR BALDEMOR

Divining the future and, more importantly, somehow willing or inviting luck and goodness into it, is an understandable, enduring obsession of many.

 

As we move into 2019, what does the Year of the Earth Pig hold in store for us?

For his 19th solo exhibit, artist Monnar Baldemor blends traditional societal symbols of auspiciousness to reflect this perennial quest. “I’m particularly fascinated by the animals of the Chinese Zodiac or Sheng Xiao,” he says. It’s a motley bunch of characters in both appearance and qualities: the dog, the monkey, the ox, the dragon, the rat, the rooster, the goat, the snake, the horse, the rabbit, the tiger, and the pig. People have always tried to infer human qualities from them – qualities that can supposedly relate to the people whose birth year falls under these animals’ years in a 12-year cycle.

In “Auspicious,” Baldemor renders these images and more elements into forms distinctly his own. Monnar applies brush, pen and a compelling palette onto canvas to invoke sprites of inspiration and revelation. “It presents itself as a challenge,” he explains. “How do you visually interpret something as intangible as good fortune? These figures depicted on my canvas no longer stand for the actual animals (or, in the case of the dragon, the mythic beast). They individually represent our aspirations for greater things, and our maybe our own tendencies or predispositions.”

A product of the University of the East’s School of Fine Arts, Monnar first honed his innate artistic skills by creating cartoons and comic strips regularly for various nationally circulated publications. He is a big fan of Mad Magazine’s Sergio Aragones – regaled by the Spanish/Mexican cartoonist and writer’s copious amounts of talent and humor.

 

Internationally acclaimed artist Manuel Baldemor was cognizant of his son Monnar’s skill and prevailed upon him to leave his full-time editorial work in order to focus his creative energies onto canvas and whatever medium (book, bag, wood, to name a few) gives expression to his art.

 

Monnar has forged a path and style all his own – beginning with laborious and intricate pen-and-ink creations counterpointed on bright, pastel-colored backgrounds. But he will be the first to tell you that he strives for constant evolution and reinvention. All that we know is that it will be unapologetically Monnar. And that, by far, remains the hardest to predict. – Kap Maceda Aguila

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