Winner Jumalon

Biography

Jumalon trained for four years at the Philippine High School for the Arts at Mt. Makiling, Los Banos, Laguna, with a major in Visual Arts. After high school, Jumalon pursued his childhood dream of entering the College of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City. He graduated with a baccalaureate in fine arts, majoring in painting.

Work

The dialogue of Jumalon's work features spaces he inhabits, or inhabited. These spaces include Zamboanga, his childhood home; Laguna, where he was a Philippine government scholar; and Quezon City, where he studied fine arts in UP.

Juamlon said that these spaces seem to be about his identity as well. Art cohabits a relation with spaces, and people as well, including teachers and friends who have allowed him to evolve, and share the life he has lived with them. He talks about his art as a matter of ideas that come from these everyday encounters with the world. And at this point, it is this art that seems to define him as a person who relates to his surroundings as well. Jumalon finds inspiration in anything and everything-—a candy wrapper, a moment, debris. He takes much from the past and speaks of it in the present, where nostalgia doesn’t necessarily mean memory as it does an assertion of what remains relevant and real across time. Jumalon begins with ideas and challenges himself to transform them into a visual form-—the only one he feels is powerful enough to carry his message. The materials to use, the ways in which it will be utilized, are all part of the concept. They enjoin together after the decision is made that an idea is worth its valure in paint and hard work. And then Jumalon, apparently, flies with it. The challenge to him has been the creation of something powerful and interesting. This beauty can represent the kind of life he sees and lives and knows. Jumalon finds solace in the urban spaces he occupies, and imagines this space as distinctly pregnant with meaning and ideas and visual possibilities. It’s an interesting view of the contemporary fast paced citylife that we all are part of. At most, it is a powerful rendering of the lives we live by someone who now knows identity and the owning of his space(s), and has chosen to live among us. He, thus can speak for us, and in that sense, his art is ours as well.

Back in his native land, he painted mostly colorful self-portraits. Whimsical and carefree are the auras that describes his works.

Spending his high school life in Laguna has been still artistically inclined having visual arts as his major. His paintings were done in subdued earth colors. He was then living in a mountain where his school is located, learning the rigors of the academic world.

Winner was fondling for an identity, painting self-portraits. It came to pass, he started using a layering technique, and drawing faces over faces, an observation perhaps, watching fellow students with their diverse individuality go under guises just to create that harmony.

Now, his living alone, playing with wide spaces and abstract figures, graffiti, black scratches on white background. He sees blunt black and white, anonymous, animosity, bare, his insight of urbanity. Random and varied images are his confidant to fit and sustain in his necessary evolution.

Accolades

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions