WAYNE Lacson Forte is rediscovering his heritage through art.
Born in Manila to a Filipino mother and an American father, he was barely three years old when he was brought by his parents to Santa Barbara, California—a departure that he insists, gave him a bit of trauma, culture-wise, as a child. He said he left with a lot of sensory memories of the food and of the language, yet was too young, too unaware to take it all in.
When Wayne’s mother passed away, it was then he felt he lost connection with the Philippines. He has since tried to reacquaint himself with his Filipino identity, starting with the language as he tries to get a hang of Hiligaynon, next by integrating cultural icons and nuances in his work. “I think I’m trying to complete that circle with where I came from,” he said.
In the Philippines, Wayne has done exhibits in Bacolod and Manila, and just recently held his first show in Cebu at the 856 G Gallery. The artist describes the particular collection as an introduction of his work to Cebuanos, a compilation of still life and of larger, figurative masterpieces that comprise his principal body of work. There are 24 artworks in total.
In the show’s official statement, the collection reflects Wayne’s response to the Philippines’ rich culture and environment. True enough, fragments of it resonate in the paintings—in the images of durian and atis (sugar-apple), in the portraits filled with Biblical allegory.
“These subjects are things that I find around me in my life that I am often not aware of. It is in painting them that I become aware of their power, structure and hopefully their meaning as they are incorporated into my visual vocabulary,” Wayne cited in the statement.
He has often been described as a “religious painter,” and in fact, has works housed in the Vatican Museum Collection of Contemporary Art. But the artist clarified, “I’m a narrative painter, and the greatest narrative is the Bible. There’s no other narrative that covers so many people, countries and is understood by so many, so I tend to gravitate toward it.”
In the Philippines especially, he finds a breadth of narratives he enjoys putting on canvas. “There’s family, politics, treachery—all this stuff going on,” he said.
As artist, Wayne was trained at the University of California, and later at Sorbonne (University of Paris) in Paris. He tried his hand in fashion and textile design while in France before fully shifting his attention to painting—a dream he had for himself since doing finger painting in nursery school and thinking, “There’s nothing I want to do more.”
Nowadays, Wayne spends his time between the USA, Brazil (where his wife is from), and the Philippines, specifically in Negros since his maternal roots are in Silay. He has a studio in Bacolod where for the past decade, he has spent three to four months each year, painting and finally taking it all in, rediscovering his Filipino identity that was once so foreign to him.