I am a Filipino posted temporarily here in Netherlands. I am neither a painter nor a writer but I paint as a hobby and I have been writing essays on art for a Filipino magazine here in Europe since a year and a half ago because my wife forced me to and because the publisher couldn't find any other Filipino to do the job. Three years ago when we moved here to Holland, I thought that I would have the chance to take some formal education in classical realism and that it would be easy to find a school teaching such style, this country being one of the seats of the Golden Age of art. Well, until now I still have to find one. All the art schools and apprenticeships available are for modern painting. And when some colleagues said I should be the one giving classes not the one receiving them I gave up the effort and continued with my own means of learning -- through art instruction books. Of course, you can just understand that my three attempts to have my paintings exhibited in some galleries here all failed. Such is the state of the art here on this part of the world. And I suppose I'll find the same when we finally go back to the Philippines. That's why I decided that this early, even when no one had actually made a frontal attack on my paintings, I should start laying down the foundations for defense and building the intellectual framework for a possible attack. The articles I contribute to this Filipino magazine (Munting Nayon) have all been written with this purpose in mind. And I thought I was alone in this task until I discovered your website four months ago. I was appalled to discover that what I thought was just a widespread erroneous way of thinking was actually a conspiracy of the worst kind. You can just imagine how happy I was in knowing that there are actually millions of other people who think like me. This has encouraged me to continue improving my painting until I reach the same level as the artists of your gallery and has emboldened me to start calling things their real name.
[...] I wish you and the whole ARC a speedy success.
Vic Collado Jr.
