A festival of hope

GLOBALISM can be showcased through multi-cultural participation in community events.

Culture and heritage, to be fully appreciated and experienced, should be shared with everyone. World understanding can then be fully achieved when people participate in activities and events that provide global impact.

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Leading the Asian community in popularizing cross-cultural interaction is the annual Singapore Heritage Festival under the auspices of the Singapore Heritage Board.

The art festival was held in August at the National Museum of Singapore. Participants came from different regions of the world because it is the thrust of the festival, which is to create a much larger reach and greater impact each year. The Philippines is always an active participant.

This year the Philippines participated through the visual artworks of the Cebuano painter, Celso Pepito. He exhibited a body of artworks that centered on a series of new paintings on family life and essential values.

He is a senior career artist who is renowned for imparting hope and positive family values as his chosen message and subject matter. His art is rendered in a cubist manner. He is a figurative painter, which is a good method in conveying the condept of family.” The artist wants his paintings to communicate a positive idea to the viewer.

He values every message he sends through his paintings.

The humble family is the essence of Pepito’s art. This humility is evident in the postures and gestures of his figures. He also depicts strong family ties. The bowed heads, the embrace, and the family members enjoying each other’s presence or working together all say one thing: love. He can never go wrong in his chosen message, which has become his mission over the years as an artist.

Pepito’s cubes and figures are conscious with form and are consistent with the requirements of proper lighting and tones. His genre is pastoral painting and sometimes set in idyllic moments, situations and environments.

He uses artistic license in his choice of palette. He sometimes utilizes the brightest of hues to bring out a festive feeling while his paintings in black and white are given life by direct and immediate contrast. True to form and content, and always in the right perspective and balance, Pepito still manages to make paintings that are stylized and modernized in composition and figuration.

As a whole, it can be said that the positive aura of Pepito’s art was the country’s contribution in the festival. It was more than educational. He told the world that love and peace can be achieved. Themes like love, hope, and peace pictured in visual form—not just as symbolisms to be read like puzzles—can be attained.

The artist and his art have come a long way. He has traveled with his art (an integral part of his life) from the exhibit circuits in Cebu, to Manila, to the classic old-world ambiance of Luxembourg in Europe and on to the busy art scene in New York. But no matter where he goes, the artist brings with him good tidings through his gem-like artworks.