Welcome the Christmas season with these artworks reminiscent of childhood patterns that leave a mark in the soul. Charlie’s Art Gallery gladly presents “Pattern Poetry” by Migs Villanueva.

Naïf painter Migs Villanueva is a story-teller at heart. Highly regarded for her works in verse and fiction, winning three Palanca Awards and an NVM Gonzales Award, she has consistently brought this essential quality to her work in visual art. Having been schooled by the famed Mauro Malang Santos as a member of the Saturday Group, Villanueva eschews the strict formalism of the Academe, and its obsession with perspectives and anatomy, instead relying on bold pastel colors, wanderlust compositions, and the inherent narrative that radiates from her all her works.

Villanueva takes her character sketches and illustrations and imbues them with saturated lightness and refreshingly simple arrangements. The exuberance and innocence of childhood is expressed in a recurring Villanueva motif: that of dots representing the eyes, nose and mouth. By reducing what should be the prime characteristics of a child to pictorial ‘suggestions’, Villanueva invites the audience to put their own childhood experiences in her works—our faces being that of the child in the painting. We become characters in the artist’s narrative, which only emphasizes her exploration of the concept of escapism. Escapism, Villanueva seems to be telling is, is to remember childhood in terms of longing and nostalgia.

Pattern Poetry opens on November 21, 2015 and runs until the year ends. For more information, email info@charliesartgallery.com.