NESTOR VINLUAN: THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD
Nestor Vinluan is a multi-faceted artist and foremost abstractionist in modern-day Philippines who takes viewers to a whirlwind of strokes and figures with his circular shapes and curvilinear paintings and installations. With these, he explores the tension between pure abstraction and his reflections and feelings evolved by nature as sky, water, light and atmosphere.
In abstraction, emotion and ideas take centerstage as they are released from their historical and cultural associations. Spirituality is a constant theme in Vinluan’s work, which invites viewers to an immersive, almost transcendent experience.
Vinluan was born in Pozorrubio, Pangasinan, and his creative inclination was sparked by his mother, a grade school art teacher, as well as his brother who had a knack for doodling and poetry.
His education at the UP College of Fine Arts only made him appreciate the rustic quality of his native town, which eventually became the foundation of his artistic development. After graduating from the UP College of Fine Arts, he acquired a master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in New York on a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship.
An educator as well as an artist, Vinluan be- came the dean of the UP College of Fine Arts in 1990. It was during his nine-year tenure that the University’s College of Fine Arts moved to its own building.
For his work, Vinluan has received numerous awards, including the Grand Prize in Painting of the Art Association of the Philippines Annual Competition in 1971, and the CCP’s 13 Artists Award in 1974. Fulbright–Hays honored him as the most outstanding Fulbright alumnus in Arts and Humanities on the 60th year of the scholarship program in 2008.
Despite all the accolades he has received, Vinluan still likes to explore unchartered territories, looking at the world through the eyes of a child.