“You can’t create masterpieces all the time. You create a lot of work. You make work that you don’t like which you learn from.”
Each piece is an image that reveals not just artistic qualities and styles, but also, her whole worldview, philosophical and moral inclinations, tendencies and temperament. It is her long and eventful journey, through life and art, inseparable and interrelated.
Her body of work is devoid of large-scale, grand paintings. Her work was simple; inspirations, found locally. Her subjects were tales from everyday life, of falling leaves, arranged flowers, folded garments, domestic clutter and broken ladders.
She was quite capable of using different mediums — pencils, pen and ink, charcoal, pastel, oil, acrylic and watercolor. She consistently challenged herself and elevated her standards. She experimented, combining charcoal and pastel. In depicting the intricate calados, she moved from acrylic and oil to watercolor, displaying her command of the less forgiving medium. Embroideries were tedious enough to portray in oil, but expressed in watercolor, she was flexing her muscles. As she grew older, she shifted from oil to acrylic to reduce exposure to the toxic fumes.
Her parents separated when she was young. Araceli was compelled to become the family’s provider after her father disappeared. Art became a livelihood, a means to shoulder responsibility, more than just a way to express oneself. A creative industry, if you will.
She was known as a portrait artist initially in her teens and twenties. Her portraiture work consisted of commissions from American GIs who mailed their likenesses to family back home in the United States and referrals passed on to her by Amorsolo, her mentor. She conducted interviews with her subjects to bring out their personalities. In time, she became frustrated, eventually turning to still life since her affluent clients would insist on having their depictions altered to suit their vanity.
By 1986, she had shifted to still life. But it is still life on her terms, that which captures Filipino essence and culture. She took inspiration from 19th-century Filipino artists who were painting local folk in Filipiniana and translated the costume into still life. She took on the challenging task of capturing the transparent and elaborately embroidered piña costumes on her canvas. After discovering her niche and beginning her lifelong love-affair with calado, she continued to explore new approaches to still life.
The delicate lacework would no longer remain on top of a table amongst blooms or shells. But hung in a sampayan beside dilapidated rags, against stone walls or decaying wood panels. The tension within the frame from contrasting ideas is palpable.
The term “still life” is misleading. Her vibrant art is everything but static.
Teaching and mentoring were in her DNA. Cheloy taught art at the Ateneo where her educational television show was broadcast for the duration of her stint. When she realized that public school teachers who taught art in their homeroom had no training in art education, she organized PAEA, an initiative to enable art teachers.
