Paul Hilario

Paul Hilario is a Filipino painter in the figurative expressionism genre in the Philippine art scene. His inspiration to create is to visualize information, issues, contradictions, scenarios, events, fallacies, and realities of life and interpret it in the way that he can. His subject matter can be anything from personal, social, historical and even political. Most of the time, he uses symbolism and prefers to create a scene of disconnections between individual images and items within the canvas. In reality these images are connected if you can see it from his point of view. He likes to make stories and prefer to use themes that spans Both ENDS of the Emotional spectrum, from happy to sad and somewhere in between.

Initially, he was influenced by the paintings of the Dutch post-impressionist Vincent Van Gogh and Filipino modernist Vicente Manansala, until he stumbled upon the Marcel Antonio virtual school of art. Much encouraged at school, He traveled back to the Byzantine era (330 to 1453) to learn old master techniques and then time-warped back to contemporary art times to mix in his own art signature.

Aside from the Philippines, his works have found their way to collectors in Australia, Canada, Dubai, Japan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, UK and the USA.

Early life

He considered himself as a muralist at the age of four. He used to draw on their rented apartment walls whenever his father, Frank Hilario, would not have enough scratch papers to give him. His father was a writer and editor and had lots of access to paper. TV shows that captured his attention, like the Land of the Lost, would inspire him to draw dinosaurs. Other shows would also rouse him to get a piece of paper and a pencil and draw whatever he see in the show like animals, cars, and people. If there were no paper available, the walls of their house sufficed.

During his primary years in school, he was always invited to draw for the school and was a consistent winner in inter school art competitions. He only knew how to use a pencil then so all his drawings were never colored. He remembers one drawing of Jose Rizal, the Philippines' national hero, displayed in front of the school during Rizal Day. He also made his own comic book heroes and comic books when he was in sixth grade. He rented them out for 25 centavos to his school mates and sold some too for 5 pesos which was good money already back in 1984.

He took the entrance tests for the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA)in hopes to further his artistic dreams. It was two days of examinations at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The third and the last day was for the practical tests at UP Diliman. He thought He was a pretty good illustrator at that time but those with him were light years ahead in skill and talent. He never received training in any medium and that was his downfall. He was pretty raw. Only 10 visual arts scholars were accepted out of the hundreds that applied. He was waitlisted but none of the 10 backed-out of the opportunity. He instead finished his secondary school at UP Rural High School in Los Baños, Laguna. He would have not entered any school at that time had it not been for his mother who pushed and helped him with all the requirements.

He took up BS Biology, majoring in Microbiology, at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.

Style

Before settling in as a figurative expressionist, Paul used an eclectic style using impressionism, fauvism, and cubism in creating his works. Most of his works at that time had impressionist backgrounds, the light and composition were somewhat cubist but the characters were always pop and cartoonish in nature. Most galleries labels his work as Naive art.

He doesn't like to paint using references and prefers to develop his own images using a very bright palette. He uses complementary colors heavily and like most artists follow the moods such as cool or warm as a guiding principle for his color selection. Early on he rarely used black and used deep violet instead.

Currently he enjoys creating works using a modified verdaccio technique.

List of exhibitions

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

External links

• [http://paul-hilario.artistwebsites.com/index.htmlPaul Hilario - Fine Art] The Art of Paul Hilario.
• [http://art-articulated.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.htmlArt Articulated] by Paul Hilario June 21, 2011
• [http://www.noenga.com/community/portfolios/paul.hilario/Paul Hilario, Community] by Paul Hilario
• [http://www.artmajeur.com/en/artist/paulhilario/artist/paul-hilario/229228/biographyAbout the Gallery Paul Hilario (FULL PROFILE)] by Paul Hialrio
• [http://1stangel.co.uk/talkthetalk/paul-hilario-talks-the-talk-with-1stangel-arts-magazine/Paul Hilario talks the talk with 1stangel arts magazine] by 1stangel Magazine, October 13, 2011