By Magdalena Arguelles
My Tatay, Jose F. Arguelles (1930-2010), known as ‘Toting’ to family and community was born in La Carlota, Negros Occidental, Philippines and grew up in Iloilo City, Iloilo. He came of age during World War II, and his education was greatly influenced by the US educational system.
American and British literature had a profound impact on him. I remember him reciting poems of Longfellow and Frost, and avidly reading the works of Dickens, Twain and L’Amour. Along with his love of literature, he enjoyed making parols, alkansiyas (piggy banks), sling shots and watercolor postcards.
As a young man, he drew ink drawings on the love letters to my Naynay and painted watercolor postcards of Iloilo landscapes which he sent to relatives abroad.
I remember the elaborate colorful parols he made with intricate winter scenes modeled after the Christmas card scenes he received from our relatives in the US, using cotton for the snow.
He made slingshots out of found hardwood, and alkansiyas out of coconuts decorated with eyes and tails so they resembled little pigs.
When my family immigrated to the US, he started to explore oil painting. He taught himself how to work with the medium and later perfected his own technique with the help of some Bob Ross pointers.
The subject matter for his paintings were still lives of flowers or vegetables he grew, bucolic landscapes and rural folks of the provinces of Iloilo, cityscapes of Iloilo City and seascapes of Ajuy, Iloilo and Nasidman Island.
Despite the hardship of establishing himself as a civil engineer in Chicago and raising four children with Nay (Magdalena), he found time to paint. He gave many of his paintings to family, colleagues and friends.
On the back of some of them, he wrote that if the current owner tires of the painting, to please not discard it, but pass it on to an admirer.
I think he would be grinning happily knowing that his paintings are being shared in this newsletter with his kababayans!
Magdalena Arguelles (@trisikad3 on IG) was born in Iloilo City and grew up in Chicago. She is a clinical pharmacist and a mixed media artist. Her paintings explore her childhood memories of Iloilo, and how they’ve shaped her as she assimilated into American culture. She paints with water-based mediums, incorporating collage and printmaking techniques to create images within her paintings.
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