It is said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Sometimes it is the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination. Like “Art” the journey is never ending, it’s a transformation, a process of ups and downs, a discovery and creative ride towards the mountain tops and sometimes in deep valley of despair. It could be a moment or place of opportunity to tell stories and inspire creatively.
Carlos “Totong” Francisco II is a versatile abstract expressionist artist. A grandson to a renowned Filipino muralist and National Artist for Visual Arts, Carlos “Botong” Francisco. Totong’s body of works includes representational aspect from positive images exploring the other side of territorial landscape of the subconscious. His themes evoke different ways of interpreting the festive substance somehow dwells on the visceral, symbolical, transitional and the metaphysical. His current approach to paintings can be related to figurative automatism. He had done over oeuvre of this kind of abstraction creating artworks bound for another collective combination of an expected elements and scrutiny. His process of concentration relies on mostly on subject about nature and experiences that speaks Hope, Freedom, New Beginning, Prosperity, Love and Beauty. Focus mainly on his creative technique using specialize sponged rollers creating an abstraction of transparent cubist effect.
The positivity and renewed energy within each work hopes to uplift the creative mind to a journey towards new perception.
On exhibit are artworks from the private collection of Dr. Oscar Castro, a full time Endocrinologist based in Oklahoma. His humble beginnings as an art collector began in the late 1990’s while travelling from different countries. To date, Dr. Castro has accumulated hundreds of artworks from different artists around the globe, and one of his many collections belong to “Totong Francisco”. Dr. Castro’s passion for the arts led him to be recognized by some Filipino artists as their top-notch collector. His initiative for this exhibition is to provide a stepping-stone for young and mid-career artists as he creates international exposure. The Journey starts in this gallery in Paseo to remind us that Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire and motivate.
