CANVASS
It was a Sunny day. The sun as blinding as usual pricked the soles of my feet waking me up in a busy Saturday. I got up surrounded by the melodies of birds, aroma of coffee in our balcony and of course, the noise of our kitchen as my mother prepares for breakfast swaying on the beat of Presley — yes, an old soul still.
I left the sofa bed and went in the comfort room, washed my face and began preparing all my materials; the canvass, pastels, towels, brushes, water and bowl. “Thank you mom!” I sipped my mom-brewed cappuccino and took a deep breath. “I can make it”, I whispered to my trying hard artist soul in me. Mix here, squeeze there and so I began.
Here in my canvass, you can see how colors unveiled a child waiting for her mother to come home from a stressful clinic knowing at the end that she made it home before sunset.
Here, in my canvass there’s a jeepney driver on the road with his mask on, begging for food, a mother waiting on a 1-hour paced line just to receive a 100 peso worth of relief goods, a body on the hospital lobby — cold for almost 2 weeks already, a father with his face shield selling his body on an invisible foe, and a girl crying in front of her father’s coffin. She waited for 2 months for his return.
As I continued painting, my mom approached me. “Let’s go, your father is waiting” Yes, that’s me. It was 10 years already since CoVid-19 plagued my country. And thank God, we are here building a new art — a new memory. Who would have thought that the beast of the past became the art of today’s canvass? “Okay, let’s go mom!”
