My health issue and cooking pigments

This year I came out as an artist in a number of exhibits in Davao City. It was a great surprise even to my closest friends, not only because nobody knew I could paint but also because of the medium I used: cooking pigments, mostly unheard of in the visual arts — curry, turmeric, annatto, paprika, blue ternate, moringa and coffee. As far as I know, only coffee has been used before in painting.

I painted full-time late in life. For all of my working years I was a professor: first in the University of the Philippines in Los Baños then in UP Mindanao where I was a pioneer faculty member. Later I became dean of our college and first recipient of the university’s Best Teacher award. Colleagues and students knew me as a writer. I published short stories, poetry, literary essays and research in English and Tagalog in books, magazines and newspapers. But I felt incomplete because I had always wanted to be an artist. As an only child growing up with adults in my grandfather’s old house, I drew and sketched on reams of used bond paper. But when I went to college, I took up journalism and then made teaching my career.

Still I never forgot my first love. When I turned 60, I applied for optional retirement to pursue it. I painted with the mediums that I had been using sporadically: acrylic, oil, watercolor, even pen and ink. The years went by uneventfully, until the Indonesian haze of 2015 reached Davao City.

The haze that changed my life came from forest fires caused by illegal slash-and-burn practices in certain parts of Indonesia. It affected Southeast Asia and reached Davao in October. I had difficulty breathing, and became very sensitive to fumes, chemicals, even the fragrance in detergents and perfumes. The doctor prescribed antihistamines and Montelukast after the routine allergy tests, but she did not have the ones for chemical allergies, which seemed to be the major culprit in my case. I had to give up painting because the chemicals in pigments made breathing difficult. The constant use of antihistamines made me sleepy, and wearing face masks was very inconvenient and not much help.

For a while I did not know what to do. I contented myself with pen and ink, but I missed the blaze of red or the vibrancy of yellow on canvas or paper. My eureka moment came one day when I saw our cooking pigments stashed in our kitchen. I come from a cooking family that finds great joy in the colorful presentation of food on the table. We like our veggie or fruit salad a medley of colors. We color our meat with annatto or prepare our sinangag with curry. We sometimes cook rice with ternate flowers to have blue rice. It dawned on me: If we could color our food with these pigments, why not use them for painting? And this was how I began to experiment with using cooking pigments on my artwork.

The cooking pigments that I mixed with water or oil gave me these colors: red (annatto and paprika), yellow (turmeric and curry), brown (coffee), green (moringa), and blue (ternate flowers). The palette is admittedly rather limited and there are other pigments that I believe can be used, but the few that I had gave me the range of colors that I wanted for my artwork. They are used with brush like traditional painting pigments on watercolor paper. But annatto can be prepared with oil and painted with fingers. I can also use watercolor or color pencils with the pigments. I have finished 10 paintings: Seven have been exhibited either solo or part of a group. The pigments give an artwork a rather hazy, dream-like quality, not loud or boisterous, but cool and subdued.

The lesson from my experience? When life gives us lemons, we can make lemonade or spend our time whining. What I had considered a personal tragedy actually opened doors for me to get noticed. If I had stayed with the traditional coloring pigments, I would probably have remained anonymous and painting only for myself. The Indonesian haze initially made the world stop for me, but now I see it as a blessing in disguise because it pushed me to seek alternatives. Truly, “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform,” and my unexpected triumph in this adversity is proof of it.

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Teresita V. Guillen, 71, lives in Davao City with her husband, six dogs and a cat. She has four children and three grandchildren. Her other interests include music and women’s issues for which she was awarded a plaque after retirement.