Nestor Vinluan on seeing the natural world differently and taking the time to pause and reflect

These characteristics are evident in his works. After all, each of his masterpieces poured forth from his strong instincts, which are in tune with how he sees the world and our position in it as humans.

At Galleria Duemila, the longest-running commercial art gallery in the Philippines, Vinluan has found deep appreciation and respect for his works and enduring friendship in its owner and art director, Silvana Ancelloti-Diaz.

Vinluan’s large-scale, vibrantly coloured pointillist works, some of which feature distorted forms, welcome visitors upon entering Galleria Duemila. On one side of the wall is a video of Vinluan made by the Cultural Center of the Philippines during the pandemic as part of its YouTube series that highlights the creative process of renowned artists. While the first section of the gallery highlights most of his pieces that resulted from layering colours one over the other, the second section, which include Flowing Form paintings and some sculptural installations, was more experimental.

Using different kinds of brushes and varied manipulations of the tool, Vinluan creates pieces out of “controlled chance,” as he puts it. His primary tools are his mind and body.

“You have to be in control... the way your hand moves... Fortunately, I’m still healthy enough to do these kinds of paintings. Otherwise, you can use dripping and just stand. But with these pieces, you have to bend your knees and squat. It’s like a dance,” Vinluan describes.

During the vernissage of the show, attendees marvelled at Vinluan moving gracefully in a trance-like manner as if creating his next masterpiece on a blank floor—while another renowned artist Gus Albor played the flute and Eghai Roxas offered beats using djembe.

Described as gestural abstractions, Vinluan’s works result from Vinluan’s intimate dialogue with line, colour, space, surface, and form. There is determination in bringing out his vision, but there is respect for the material on which it leads him. Viewers may take time to look at a single piece and enter into an illusory sensation that makes them inside and outside the work. Some people call this “Magic Eye”.

“It’s a very Oriental way of art practice where painting is employed by meditative motion or any physical effort,” Vinluan shares his thoughts, identifying some artists who would apply what they learned in martial arts to their works. But instead of producing pieces that seem aggressively made, Vinluan’s pieces evoke balance and harmony, sometimes symmetry, which tell us of the artist’s inclination for perfection—one of the many fundamentals of Western art.

Vinluan’s pieces require tremendous patience and love, and some take months to complete. But in the artist’s heart, the process brings a sense of fulfilment and wonder.

“My subject has always been the natural world—how I look at the skies, the multi-coloured circles I see in my vision when staring at a blank space for some time, the waters, the roots of plants in the earth, the cosmos, the stars,” Vinluan says while we look at the immaculately white pieces from the Morning Mantra series that is a feat on texture and mixed media.

“Everything becomes a source of inspiration for me as an artist. It’s an ongoing reflection that you get to do from the moment you wake up until you get to bed. I want people to look at my pieces and take time to be still,” Vinluan says.

With a career spanning 50 years, Vinluan has drawn inspiration from some of the most revered modernist painters, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arturo Luz, and more. And yet, the distinctiveness of his palette and the discipline in his physicality he continues to possess sets him apart. He imparts these with his students, who continue to seek his mentorship despite having made names for themselves already.

“It is really difficult to be an artist. But keep going, enjoy what you do, keep experimenting, and always have an open mind,” Vinluan advises young artists. “You don’t stop after creating a beautiful piece. Keep moving and searching. Throughout the years, I’ve learnt to be sensitive towards the things around me. So, always look at things freely and imaginatively,” he continues.

The practice itself of artmaking is something Vinluan finds as a portal for artists to look within as human beings. “You enter a deeper level of consciousness.”

The artist recalled his student years at the University of the Philippines Diliman, when Plato’s Know Thyself struck him. “It guided me, inspired me... I even hung it on my wall to remind me while studying,” he quips. He connects this profound, reflective nature of art and the artmaking process with his budding days as a freshman in college. Now, he attests that it is true, not to mention, important in navigating life.

Today, Vinluan remains an indefatigable force in the contemporary art scene. He visits exhibitions of his former students and offers consultations to those exploring today’s competitive and heavily commercialised industry. He meditates daily to thank the Divine for blessing him with a new day to live and maximises each hour in cherishing the things and people he values most in life.

At the end of our conversation, he quoted William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, sharing how it inspires him to see the world with a different pair of eyes: “To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour.”

The exhibition Paintings/Installations/Objects V was mounted through the efforts of Galleria Duemila’s founder and art director Silvana Ancelloti-Diaz, gallery manager Álvaro Talavera and his exhibition team, and included exhibition notes written by esteemed art critic Cid Reyes. The exhibition culminates on March 15, 2025.

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