Three weeks into the new year, local artists banded to regain a solid footing in terms of creativity, which some felt became sparse due to the pandemic. However, during those dark days locked down art sessions, a Cebuano art group believes a silver lining emerged from the crisis.
To their astonishment, painting remotely in solitude actually led to a considerable improvement in the quality of art, giving birth to more distinctive art signatures for each artist.
The Friday Group Sessionistas (FGS) shared more on this creative revival and how it impacted fellow members.
“Two years into the pandemic, artists were confined to their own homes or studios, which is why when we gradually returned to ‘normalcy,’ we were at first unaccustomed. However, we also noticed that our artists’ work had improved because they were stuck in their homes, where they had more time to concentrate,” said Efren Enolva, a core member of FGS.
This is seemingly a manifestation that art cannot be limited and that no matter the setting, artists have the ability to be both unfettered and unstoppable in their own creative ways.
In light of this year’s Sinulog festival, which is also a celebration of Cebuano arts and culture, FGS could not pass up the chance to put up an art exhibit inside Robinsons Galleria Cebu. There are 63 paintings displayed in oil, pen and ink, and acrylic, with styles ranging from realism, impressionism, contemporary, and a lot more.
Although the art exhibit does not limit itself to a central theme, FGS is hopeful that featuring various art styles will bring Cebuano talents to bigger platforms.
“There’s a lot of artists in Cebu that are still undiscovered. Most of us only know some of the most prominent ones such as Juan Luna but not Cebu talents. Hopefully, we aim to raise this awareness,” said artist Francisco Soria.
Soria and Enolva also talked about how the group of 18 artists came to be and how they developed to be a group of one-vision, one-goal groups of artists.
The founding members claimed that Fridays were the days when they felt the most free to hang around and engage in the thing that the members loved the most—creating art.
“Because Cebu’s art scene is relatively small and we frequently cross paths, artists who share the same wavelength as ours came together to form Friday Group Sessionistas and we were formalized in 2019,” Soria said. “Sessions mean that we paint together on the spot along with the members, be it outdoor or in the studio,” Enolva added.
Soria and Enolva hope to create an artistic community in Cebu City that is well-versed in the basic principles of the visual arts. Both of them believed that exposing young children to the arts stimulates their brains and helps them to develop their imaginations.
“Because of this, we mentor and develop the abilities of young artists in the hopes that they will succeed on the global stage when they decide to make it big,” Enolva explained.
Aside from this, many artists lose sight of their individual identities due to other influences like politics and business. Not that art cannot be political or a means of income, but the relative lack of a strong moral foundation is what FGS hopes to address.
“When the group becomes misguided because of its own agenda, it leads to broken goals and eventually pushes the group to crumble,” Enolva said.
The complexity of an artist’s mind is one that cannot be defined by rules because doing so would only enslave one’s artistic expression. FGS’s approach of providing fertile ground for pursuing art with a clear objective is both admirable and ambitious. Although it understands that each artist has his or her own desires, FGS believes that potential conflict can be reduced or resolved with proper communication.
At the end of the day, art organizations exist to support and inspire. FGS acknowledges that each artist’s work has its own nuances and the best thing it can do is to help the next generation of artists, particularly Filipino ones, succeed on bigger stages. S