TO CELEBRATE the “Art Month” of February, Cebu Artists Inc. (CAI) put up an exhibit featuring still life paintings, titled “Celebrating Life,” at the ground floor of The Alcoves, Ayala Center Cebu. At the opening, CAI president Sonia Yrastorza presented the exhibiting artists: Jonathan Abellana, Lida Maria Aguilar, Nathaniel Garrido, Cesar and Georgina Castillo, Renan Dingal, Jess and John Dinglasa, Jun Impas, Celso and Fe Madrid Pepito, Lucilo Sagayno, Antonio Vidal, Marlon Ylanan and herself.

Still life, explained artist Sagayno, is usually the first subject of an aspiring artist. It is the “basic foundation in studying light and shade for black and white” so when the artist goes to color, he will already have “studied the gradations, the values of light and shade.”

Celso Pepito, on the other hand, said the exhibit made the artists go back to basics, to the “small things that have led them to the bigger things, to other subjects, to the bigger paintings they now do.”

The exhibit has several paintings of flowers, some in vases and some in pots, of compositions of objects dear to the artists’ hearts whether they are religious or ornaments like old clocks, musical instruments, books. These were mostly done in the medium and mode the exhibiting artists have evolved into.

There is enough variety in “Celebrating Life” to make it worth seeing. The exhibit runs until March 16 and is presented by CAI in cooperation with Ayala Center Cebu.