From screen to canvas and vice versa
Unlike in film and television— fields where he is known for by most people—Louie Ignacio is not concerned much about narratives when painting. When he paints, his primary aim is to give his audience a unique experience of feeling or even the slightest shift in mood. He does so through strokes and textures, which are often intentionally thick and broad in order to cut deep within and penetrate the viewer’s emotions. “I tell stories through film,” Louie says. “But I want this practice and my paintings to be somewhat different in execution.” What is crucial, according to him, is the mark or the signature or the unifying element that “lets the viewers know that the works were created by one person.”
As an artist, Louie puts great value and weight on personal style. For him, it is important for an artist to be known for his or her own stylistic expression and, he says, he is lucky to have one. While film and painting are two worlds of different practices involving distinct processes and executions, Louie claims to draw from “a single heart” when attempting to create in either of the fields. For example, he sees film directing as the act of “painting scenes,” evident in the way he executes camera angles or in his type of cinematography in general. “Bawat hagod ng brush sa canvas ay siya namang pagkumpas ng anggulo sa bawat eksena sa pelikula (a brush stroke on the canvas is like a direction on the camera angle of a scene within a film),” he says.
For Louie, color, both in painting and cinematography, serves one purpose: to give life to an artwork. “Ginagamit ko sa color palettes ng pelikula ang colors mula
sa aking paintings (The color palettes in my films are drawn from the colors of my paintings),” he says. “And like in my dreamscape and floralscape paintings, every single color in my films holds a specific meaning. It signifies something, such as the scene’s mood.”
In his most recent show, “#DEepexPRESSIONs,” Louie was given the chance to showcase both of his artistic worlds. The show was a simultaneous presentation of his 9th solo exhibition and the Philippine premiere of his short film of the same title. The short, which has been invited for screening and competition by numerous international film and art institutions and festivals, tackles serious and timely topics such as depression and uncertainty during the Covid-19 pandemic. Louie heavily drew from what he personally felt under quarantine here in the Philippines. “Locked up in my room, and listening to all the sad news, I could not help but feel depressed for the many persons affected, especially the frontliners who risked and lost their lives,” he says. “Hearing news of people getting sick, and not knowing what to do and how I could help, I painted, and made this film. Art was my refuge.”
Aside from coinciding with the local premiere of his short film, this specific exhibition was special for Louie because it was held at and in collaboration with Fundacion Sansó, an organization that preserves and promotes the legacy of Spanish painter Juvenal Sansó. “Master Sansó is my idol. I love his works, his color palette, style, and most of all his subjects. His works are like scenes in a film,” he says. “I’ve always followed him in shows and art gatherings. His life story is one of a kind—something I would love to turn into a film someday.”
It has always been Louie’s dream to mount an exhibition inside the halls of a museum devoted to one of his greatest inspirations as a painter. In fact, he says, the works in #DEepexPRESSIONs are in a way dedicated to Sansó. The works—which are tranquil landscapes and floralscapes—represent the emotion Louie feels when looking at a Sansó artwork, where every color is also carefully situated and, like a film, framed to perfection.
Aside from the inspiration drawn from the masterpieces of Sansó, the works in the exhibition are mainly abstract representation of different landscapes borrowed from places Louie has visited such as France, Italy, Salento, and Kazakhstan. Beyond this, however, he simply seeks to uplift the mood of everyone during a difficult time caused by the coronavirus. The many bright colors used in the works represent the yearning for an end to this misery we are currently facing.
At its very core, #DEepexPRESSIONs is an artist’s manifestation of a desire, a longing for a better and brighter tomorrow for everyone.
While film and painting are two worlds of different practices involving distinct processes and executions, Louie claims to draw from ‘a single heart.’