Artist: Lemuel Cunanan

Lemuel Cunanan gives his landscape paintings a sombre, reflective tone. His compositions capture a subdued stillness in the setting sun, a serene dusk that ushers in the night, or a hushed anticipation in the bukang liwayway. However, he is also capable of depicting the sun in the intense red tones of a raging fire, far off in the distance but still a powerful force to be reckoned with. Despite having no formal art training, he has worked hard and painstakingly to acquire the flexibility to depict the subtle and stark differences between light and shadow. Painting on various surfaces, such as walls, cars, and tricycles, would eventually bring him to the canvas, where his life’s labour can be duly immortalised.

Art is always evolving but it is also a cycle of movements

When Juan Luna took home three gold medals at Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes for his Spoliarium his technique called Chiaroscuro became popular among other Filipino Masters such as Fernando Amorsolo, Fabian de la Rosa and Cesar Buenaventura until modernist Victorio Edades and the 13 moderns became widely favored in the Philippine Art Scene.

Today artists such as Orley Ypon, Jun Impas, Teody  Racuya and Lemuel Cunanan are reviving the Philippine Romanticism. As style that takes years to master  and an extreme amount of dedication to pursue.

Their works are reflections of something that is almost forgotten  slowly being revived again.

Pastoral landscapes become idyllic scenes as artist Lemuel Cunanan paints these settings in a soft and serene quality. Usually represented in a wide-angle perspective, his landscapes emphasize the vastness in space in pasturelands, hills, and mountains. In effect, this stimulates an overwhelming wonder, moreover with the distant and smaller-scaled human or animal figures juxtaposed with the landscape in the painting.

Cunanan’s style is heavily influenced by the Romanticist movement, whereas nature is framed in a dramatically picturesque manner. Similar to the iconic pastoral painting styles of Fernando Amorsolo, Cunanan transforms existing simple countryside settings into two-dimensional aesthetical scenes.