"Diaphanous - Anthuriums (B-CXVI)" 1996
Oil on canvas. 119.38 x 200.03 cm; 47 x 78.75 in Victoria Garcia 
"Diaphanous – Anthuriums (B-CLXXXVII)" 2012
Oil on canvas. 182.88 x 213.36 cm; 72 x 84 in Private Collection |
Anthurium SeriesFilipino artists are, of course, not immune to the seduction of flowers. Whether as still lifes or as decorative elements in domestic interiors, flowers bloom in the brilliantly painted canvases of representational or figurative artists. To be sure, flowers are the last thing one would find in the works of abstract artists. How then did an abstractionist maestro such as Romulo Olazo fall in love with the subject of flowers?
In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, regarded as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, there is a passage that describes a man bringing a bunch of hyacinths to the woman he loves. Years later, the woman wistfully remembers the incident: “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago. They called me the hyacinth girl.” When it was the man’s turn to remember that incident, he said: “—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden. / Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was waiting / living nor dead, and I knew nothing / Looking into the heart of light, the silence.” T hat passage and imagery seem appropriate when recalling the time when artist Romulo Olazo, having arrived from a Saturday Group of Artists painting session at the Flower Farm in Tagaytay, brought to his wife Patricia an armful of flowers. In this case, not hyacinths but anthuriums. For a purely cinematic scene, that incident should be filmed with a misty lens, romantically accompanied by the swelling of violins. As it turned out for the Olazo couple, more anthuriums arrived at their residence a few days later, compliments of the Flower Farm. It was as if the Flower Farm had intuited Olazo’s attraction for anthuriums, thereby accidentally, if indirectly paving the way for another theme in the art of Olazo. - CID REYES / EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK: ROMULO OLAZO
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“Diaphanous - Anthuriums (B-CL)” 2010
Oil on canvas. 121.92 x 243.84 cm; 48 x 96 in St. Luke’s Medical Center - Global City
Oil on canvas. 121.92 x 243.84 cm; 48 x 96 in St. Luke’s Medical Center - Global City
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