Heading to the Islands, Thank you!
Everyday Life
🏝Island life. I am so happy and grateful we’re headed to you next.🍹
🧡 Who will you thank you hug? 🧡
Rhythm
Our daughter came home from school with a gift bag. Inside was a dress with a note from her classmate: “Thank you for a great summer. Enjoy this dress with good wishes.”👗
It was a sweet, unexpected gesture, and we spent the night preparing a thank you card in reply. Her classmate’s thank you gift started a thank you chain, and even just the act of writing thank you made us smile–gratitude really is the best pickmeupper.🤸
🧡 On Orange Day, reach out to people with a thank you hug, no explanation needed. While you’re at it, go ahead and thank you hug yourself too! 🫂
A summer gone
Everyday Life
Came across this in my drafts, written a year ago…and funny that it seems I’m on repeat this year.
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We’re now in month 8 of the year and looking back at Summer 2015 pictures makes me wonder how all of that could’ve happened in just seven months.
Back-to-back heartbreaks, recovery, purging, breakthroughs, identity building, crossing thresholds, birthing. Seems the tailend of my year of gallivanting has given its final bow and by gosh am I so thrilled to hear the fat lady singing already. On hindsight I see that I did ask for all of this, and I now move forward in gratitude, always. And in joy.
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Of course there are no true repeats, but always, we move in gratitude and joy. Thank you, 2016. You’ve been wonderful so far.
Thank you and goodbye, 2014.
Everyday Life
How was your 2014?
In August, I did a mid-year review for the widening that was New York, and wow, looking through those doodles now, I wonder how things could’ve taken a turn so bad after a moment of wonderment like that. I didn’t know it then, but I needed that refilling of the well to get through the -ber months that were waiting for me in Manila.
I drew and doodled and painted less after August, but managed enough to squeeze out the below review for the tailend of 2014. If you look carefully between the drawn lines, you will see the struggle to keep seeing the glass as half-full, up until the point of despair. I always say that no news is good news, but it doesn’t apply to creative output. No art is definitely bad news.
This is one of those times when I can declare loudly and clearly that I am so glad for endings. Thank you and goodbye, 2014:
Still thankful for the year in its entirety. Everything is preparation:
BIG HUGS for the new year!
Taking a breather: thank you 1st sem!
Studying Art
What a sight for sore eyes! Or in my case, sore everything–thumbs, fingers, aching back and legs– all from too much creative pounding for the past five months.
Art school has definitely arrived, and in a fury at that. I never expected an art course to be so demanding: 3-hour sleep cycles in between non-stop creative work and deadline after deadline.
Still holding up the banner of No regrets, though. Everything is preparation and it is true: I am exactly where I need to be. So many lessons learned in one semester, and I will have to make sense of them to clear the space and make way for fresh energy for the next one.
Right now, though, midway through semestral break, my place is by the beach. On happy hour. With no pencils or sketchbooks or a visual problem that needs solving.
Rest is good.
Thank You. 🙂
THANK YOU show for my 30th, yay!
Everyday Life
Had my first one-man show at the twins’ bar in San Juan as a BIG THANK YOU for the 30 years that were, and for the 30,40,50,or more that will be 🙂
Was a night of many surprises, including many GOHs (guests of honor) who drove/flew in from all over. Had a good starstruck moment when Tito Robert walked in with Hermes Alegre, one of my all-time favorite Filipino painters!
So great to be 30–I say THANK YOU, and everyone says THANK YOU back! Woohoo!!
I LOVE YOU, friends and family
xoxo
I like 30, I feel 30 🙂
December 15, 2010, Wednesday
Bardeli’s, San Juan
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WORKS SHOWN:
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Dead star
Acrylic on paper
He who waits for us is just like us.
Acrylic on paper
“Every cry is an unknotting.”
Acrylic on paper
*Quote by Crisi
We are just passing through.
Acrylic on canvas
El Nido
Acrylic on paper
Don’t be amazed by the light of your teacher, there is more.
Gouache on paper
Meditation
Gouache on paper
Oh Thou I!
Gouache on paper
Embrace
Gouache on paper
Mom and Dad
Acrylic on canvas
Kuy
Acrylic on paper
Jon
Acrylic on paper
Sammy
Acrylic on paper
Self-portrait
Acrylic on canvas
Pete bahu, 2003
Phil bahu, 2003
Oil pastel on paper
Jae, 2010
Oil pastel on wood
Pachi, 2010
Oil pastel on wood
xxoo, 2010
Acrylic on paper
xoxo, 2009
Oil on canvas
Newlyweds, 2009
Oil on canvas
Tree, 2003
Oil on canvas
Falls, 2009
Oil on canvas
Sunset, 2003
Oil on canvas
Einstein’s boat, 2003
Pastel on paper
Fish series, 2002-2010
More pics of the thanksgiving show on facebook.
Other pics at gabisuncultured.blogpspot from my friend Gab, who said: “My friend celebrated her birthday with her first one-woman exhibit. And it wasn’t in an art gallery… it was in a bar. Kewl.”
Kewl na kewl! Salamat!
on being grateful
Everyday Life
Chalk and pastel on sandpaper
“When you are grateful–when you can see what you have–you unlock blessings to flow in your life.” – Suze Orman
Interesting to see being thankful as being present.. 🙂
What moves us to say those words out loud? THANK YOU. Thank you mom, thank you dad, thank you lover, thank you sister, thank you friend. These words are never said with a heavy heart. Neither are they received with anything but a warm smile. Have you ever scoffed at someone who offered you a sincere word of thanks.
Many motivational materials advise us to start (and end) our day with a “thank you”. Gives an instant uplift to mood, spirit, and yes, even the body. “Thank you” is so immediate, it’s a natural response to receiving…also to giving.
Turn it around and take “being present” to mean “thank you”– when you’re living in the now, fully aware and recognizing what’s already before you, you are actually being thankful.
What a nice thought. 🙂