For a novice among exhibiting artists, Inday Reyes Cadapan manage to regale her viewers with technical versatility in painting and sculpture. A self-taught artist she possesses the courage (or call it temerity) and single-minded purpose in eschewing any changes in style since the days of Picasso and Matisse.
The spirit of Picasso animates the picture or a serene-looking woman in the throes of giving birth in the nearly-monochromatic study in grey “Woman’s Agony” 1985. The simply-composed “Gratitude”1981, which depicts an other-worldly scene of two white bodied extraterrestrials engrossed in lively dialogue while leaning against a brown wall under cerulean skies, exudes a discernible Mattisean ambieance.
Basking innocent joy and unconstrained intuitive esthetics, Inday gathered in her witty works the naivéte and power of folk art and grafted them to the coloristic strengths and visual sophistication of Cubism and figurative Expressionism.
In looking at object and human models, Inday instinctively and mentally fragmentizes their form, picking out appealing shapes and then assembles them upon a flat pictorial space, into new and intimate conglomerations of colored areas bounded by lines that move with spontaneous grace. Fragments from male and female human anatomies, animals, fishes and birds are fused with masks and batibot (metal-backed chairs) to form jolting juxtapositions.
Vivid colors are laid upon the jigsaw-puzzle combinations of image-fragments in untrammeled expressiveness, revealing the artist’s desire to give full reins to her feminine emotions and temperament. The results may be charming, as in “Moon Dance” 1985, or violently disturbing as in “Stampede” 1986.
The psychedelic colors of “Divisoria” 1985 enliven a gripping interpretation of that teeming commercial jungle in jumbled fragmented images of men and beasts, hinting that some force in their psyche drives them into nightmarish confusion.
In her mergers of man and beast, Inday many have his upon a wellspring of them about: his origin, his future and most important, his eternal soul. These are thoughts which are stirring in the least and ominous at the most.
In this respect, “The Search” 1985, another grey symphony, is a culminating thesis of Inday’s personal pursuit for truths in her complex psyche; here are gathered the motifs of man, beast, batibot and mask, all imbued with rich symbolisms of dreams and nightmares.
In a change of pace, Inday painted portraits ranging from the unrecognizable face of a hat wearing girl holding a pair of doves, in “Peace” 1985 to the engaging visage, stylized but close-to-the-original, of a brown woman with wild flaring hair, in “Impossible” 1985.
Another series of portraits incorporates fabric collage in delineating parts of the face initially, as in “Peace Campaign” 1984 but later in the full-length portraits, on ly the clothes of the picture personages, like “Ate Laylay” 1985. The revered stature of the “Ate Laylay” in the family and in the community is disclosed discreetly in the way this matron’s picture fills almost the whole pictorial space.
The use of fabric collage is an idiom which Inday shares with other contemporary women painters. Perhaps, their playing with dolls during their childhood leaves some imprint in their subconscious.
The series of wood relief is weakened by the failure to highlight the interesting design of the wooden backrest of chairs; instead Inday completely covered them to oblivion—sayang.
The sculptural aspect of the exhibit suffered in comparison to the paintings and collages. Although inventive and inspired constructions form ordinary household
Objects, the sculptures failed to compete effectively with the more attractive paintings.
As a start for an artistic career, this initial exhibit by Inday is no less propitious than those of other artists who have gone far in the Philippine art world. No dought these successful artists are saying to her: “Welcome to the club”.