Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

I hardly check my Gmail account. And when I did today, I found an email from Kim telling me that his dad passed away February 1. Thirteen years ago I wrote something about Prof. Valino. I interviewed him, took some photos, and wrote the article below for a travel newspaper I worked with for a couple of years.

Last I heard from Kim, Prof. Valino was living in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ejica with his cousins and nephews who took very good care of him. Kim sent a photo and I was quite happy to see that his father looked healthier and plumper. My last memory of him then was a very thin frail man (as in the photo I took of him below in 1995) - which was after his retirement from teaching at university. That time he was working on a mural painting.

In Cabanatuan, Prof. Valino had lots of painting work to do - he still had commissions and has done some paintings for the churches and chapels in Cabanatuan City. Kim said that Prof. Valino also had paintings of various stages of development in his studio. Perhaps there would be some interest in the Valino clan, perhaps his daughter Lorna who is also an artist, to document and investigate Prof. Valino’s work development - it could be a valuable contribution to a truly indigenous art education in the country.

I feel sorry that I didn’t get Kim’s email on time to attend Prof. Valino’s funeral and meet his family… I feel sorry that I was never able to stay in touch with Prof. Valino after he left Manila…

Carlos P. Valino, Jr., reluctant master
by Fatima Lasay
TravelNews Philippines issue October 1995

There’s work going on at the lobby of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. For nearly three months now, Carlos P. Valino, Jr. has been pouring his heart out onto a larger than life painting in an effort to depict the vast history of the Fine Arts.

From dusk till dawn, one can see the artist at work, progressing, studying, reviewing the images, there in the lobby of the college building. It is an unusual situation, because Valino is no ‘exhibitionist.’

For years, art has been a private matter for Valino, never taking pleasure in art shows and exhibits, never really wanting to show off his work or sell them. And if he should ever show them, he shows them only to a chosen few, and if he is ever talked into selling them, he tags exorbitant prices. Valino’s attachment to his work is bordering selfishness, a private affair, a work all his own.

Carlos P. Valino, Jr. was born in Sampaloc, Manila. His childhood years, however, flourished in the provinces of Cabanatuan, Nueva Ejica and Santiago, Isabela. In 1947, he entered the UP School of Fine Arts as a Ramon Roces Scholarship Grantee. In 1951, fresh out of school, he worked as a freelance artist until seven years later he was asked to teach at the UP School of Fine Arts. From 1965 to 1969 he served as College Secretary of the then College of Fine Arts and Architecture.

Besides being a UP professor, he has managed to put up a few one-man shows and win major prizes in various painting competitions, among them the Bonifacio Centennial, the Malvar Centennial, and the Aguinaldo Centennial. In 1976 and 1977, he was listed in the Dictionary of International Biographies and in Volume 4 of the Illustrated Men of Achievements book. He is also the recipient of the Outstanding Novo Ecijanos Award in 1982.

It is worth mentioning here that Valino never really intended to become an artist. His first choice in college was Medicine; he wanted to become a doctor. His mother wanted him to become an artist. Perhaps there is little difference between his youthful interest and his destiny, as today Valino is an expert on the human figure.

Valino’s mastery of the oil medium may be associated with a deep and lasting reaction to the drama and treatment of the gigantic Spoliarium. As both creator and critic of art, his involvement with the works of his mentor, Ireneo Miranda, may also be considered a significant contribution to his practice of art today.

In the proliferation of styles beginning in the 70s to the present, a stylistic pluralism has evolved, and many of our contemporary artists have subconsciously directed their styles in a need to comply with the demands of what is popular and new. In the midst of this crossbreed of styles, the technique, imagery and material of Valino is a timeless classic. While many styles today are rapid and spontaneous burst of color, Valino’s is a disciplined and progressive study on the laws of value, color and texture. I have seen his line drawings in the early stages of his work at the College of Fine Arts, and the lines are whimsical where the images are so, and the lines are aggressive where the emotive content is aggressive. The patient and masterful control of every line, every space and value is what sets a dedicated master apart from the dabbling painter or the ominous art mill.

However, Valino is not the stereotypical artist living in a degenerative state. He is the jocular artist, the one unaffected by whatever spate of critics or vandals, the one calmed by religiosity, acquiring the therapeutic benefits of his art.

Looking over his few art shows from 1967 to the present, one may notice a slight but significant abandon from the political and social statements he has made to the more spiritual and religious thematic series beginning in the early 1980’s. He quips that perhaps as one gets older, one becomes more concerned with his reputation in heaven. He is not, however, slightly concerned about his popularity on this temporal earth. He has done huge works gratis et amore, and he is not impressed at the trend of artists putting up as many as three art shows every year. To Valino, art is never a source of revenue but rather solely a source of joy. His work in progress at the College of Fine Arts is his love for art and for God. And for the first time in his life as an artist, he could feel a presence guiding his hand into asserting the images of a work he could not now merely regard all his own.

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