My Onibs

I had an altogether too extensive encounter with Onib Olmedo's widow and daughter yesterday. It was my mom's birthday and, as she hosted lunch, we each took a crack at explaining why the painting Tita B brought to our house was a fake Onib. Yes, we knew him and his work. He was a good man and a great artist. My dad's best friend and best man at his wedding. I grew up with beautifully grotesque faces on the walls and lots of laughs from the man who invented "Aling Gulaman..." My sister and I each have an oil painting by him -- unfinished -- the paintings on his easels when he died in 96. They are both unsigned but in all respects, real Onibs -- in mood, and color, and emotion. I am thrilled to have sat for the portrait. It now hangs on my mom's new house in Las Pinas. In it, my eyes are glassy and tired, the expression almost sad -- I was then reviewing for the bar, needed sleep, and I wore glasses that day rather than my usual contact lenses and took them off when I sat for my portrait. He had tried afterwards to sketch eyeglasses over those tired eyes. It is amazing. I remember Daughter B saying that day as I was sitting for the portrait, before I got even my first glimpse of it, wag mo nang tignan -- pangit (Filipino for "ugly"). Meaning, it wasn't a glamour portrait. And it wasn't. My husband would later say the portrait doesn't look anything like me. Also meaning, I am pangit in it. But the portrait is beautiful because it captures how I felt that day. It is undeniably and wonderfully me.

In my own house (a small, 128 sq. m. flat my husband and I are leasing from my mother-in-law), 5 Onibs grace the walls. Two pastels on paper and 3 acrylics on t-shirts -- yes, t-shirts on which Onib playfully painted portraits of my dad and my mom (in all her akbtibista splendor -- complete with barbed wires and a poster? banner? truncheon? behind the kind face) and an unrecognizable creature with the words "Onib fan" merged into the painting. I assert that I am the Onib Fan. The painting isn't of me but as it is now mine, I choose to be it.