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By Rhick Lars Vladimer Albay
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Monday, March 19, 2018
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Nurse turned self-taught artist meditates zen in first solo show
“I NEVER [really] left art,” the young Ilongga artist Shiela Molato told Panay News during the opening of her first solo show “Placid” at gallery i this late February.
A Nursing graduate of Riverside College in Bacolod City, Molato became a registered nurse in 2008 and practiced her profession overseas for nearly five years before finally deciding to pursue her passion for art fulltime.
“I’ve always been drawing and painting – even when I veered off into nursing,” she explained. “[Nursing] was a rewarding career, but I felt that it was not what I was supposed to be doing. I was at a crossroads, I was about to leave to work overseas again when I decided to quit.”
In 2014, Molato left her position as a nurse and became a photographer at a European-owned studio, while honing her craft as a visual artist and painter in her free time.
Since then, the self-taught Molato has returned to Iloilo and joined a handful of group exhibits – most notably the QuoLab Iloilo 2017 design feast helmed by a group of young up-and-coming designers – and with “Placid” she presents a tour de force of 19 mixed-media pieces inspired by minimalism and Zen philosophy.
The canvases in “Placid” brim with tranquil stasis and reflect Molato’s somber meditation, but the calm is seemingly cut by an undercurrent of quiet foreboding. Her pieces resemble stirring topography and compelling landscapes, the emerging artist birthing unusual terrain with a deft and deliberate hand.
There is something innately intriguing and metallurgical in her series of “Polar” canvases, the lunar faces of “Polar IV” and “Polar VI” distinctively resembling molten gold caught in motion, as “Polar I” rendered in bright chrome bears a likeness to the uroboros sign – the circular symbol of a snake swallowing its own tail, an emblem synonymous with cycles and wholeness.
Meanwhile, in Molato’s “Placid” series, she paints serene gradients that meld contrasting colors and clashing textures – the monotony broken by the self-taught artist’s unique flourishes and heavy strokes, suggesting tumbling waves and upstream currents.
“Zen philosophy has been a big influence on my works for my first solo show,” related Molato. “Placid means calm and peaceful and it comes to mind when we speak of meditation wherein the focused mind, with deliberate actions, is encouraged to achieve enlightenment. It speaks of my process for this series and the effect I want my works to impart to the audience.”
“I hope my works can provide them respite. I hope they inspire in the viewers the serenity and introspection with which they were conceived,” she added.
Molato shares that through her art she’s found “contentment and freedom” – finally being able to pursue her true calling. Unbridled by anyone’s expectations, the Ilongga artist-on-the-rise has mined her artistic process to showcase the awe-inspiring “Placid” – the brainchild of a driven abstract painter already building a name for herself.
“I am unafraid to experiment. I see myself as a passionate individual and I’m eager to master a craft,” Molato concluded./PN
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