“Mango Avenue” by Architect Ritchie N Vios (Photo by Gerard Pareja)
In all of visual arts, the watercolor medium is what captures reverie best.
Overlapping hues and shades softly fade and blend inside the frame evoking the gentlest of phantasmagorias.
Staring at a watercolor work long enough, one feels as if he’s beckoned into a dream, making one’s awareness segue into the alpha state.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that architect and watercolor artist Ramon Vios Jr. is one passionate dreamer.
He not only dreams of establishing an active community of watercolor artists in Cebu, but also he wants to put Cebu in the map as a kind of watercolor Mecca that would lure watercolorists around the world to come and interact with our artists.
He believes that such interactions will improve the craft of the medium’s practitioners and could be a tourism boom for Cebu.
Come to think of it, there’s no single country that can be singled out for watercolor fame.
He is taking his first step into fulfilling this dream by launching “Gasa,” a watercolor exhibit and workshop in Robinsons Galleria that runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 14.
Vios says that the 15-day activity is a gift both to his dad (also an architect who happens to be his namesake and whose birth-day coincided with the exhibit opening) and to Cebuanos who are interested in watercolor as a medium. He plans to hold the activity
“Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House” by Architect Ramon Vios Jr.
annually.
The exhibit, a Vios family affair featuring the works of the organizer and his next of kin (parents, siblings, cousins, offspring), has mostly landscapes and street scenes for subjects.
The workshops from Sept. 1 to 5 featured renowned artist and professor Kimsoy Yap and architect-painters Dino Pajao, Panfilo Castro Jr. and Fred Galan. Vios hopes to change the public’s misconception about watercolor. The medium is not just for children.
“Ancestral House
in Argao” by Architect Ramon Vios Jr.
The architect also points out that with the advent of technology the colors for the medium have multiplied and so too the longevity of the work. A watercolor work can now last at least a hundred years.
The thought that their works could inspire dreams for at least a century would certainly make a community of watercolorists smile.
