Filipina makes waves in Christie's and Sotheby's

The name Geraldine Javier may be unfamiliar to many of us but at auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's, she's a very important person.

Javier sold a painting worth $36,850 (nearly P2 million). The painting, The Absurdity of Being, was sold last May 27 at Christie's Hong Kong. Before that, Javier sold Storm Chasing Dog Chasing Girl Chasing Storm, at undisclosed price in Nov. 26, last year. The year before that, she sold One Leads to Oblivion, The Other to Sorrow, at Sotheby's Singapore.

Javier is not exactly the first Filipina artist to have accomplished such feats. Bencab, Anita Magsaysay Ho and Filipino great painter Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo, to name a few, sold their work at equally hefty prices also at Sotheby's, Larasati's, and Christie's.

But what Javier has done proves nothing more that local artists are definitely as in demand as their foreign counterparts—they were good then and are still good now.

Bloomberg.com reporter Andy Mukherjee says the interest in Filipino art, is because collectors, who can't afford the more expensive Chinese or Indian contemporary paintings, are turning to artists like Javier.

The thirty-something Javier is a graduate of fine arts at the University of the Philippines. But few knows that she took nursing, at UP Manila before she became a painter.

“I finished my course in nursing and in fact I placed eighth in the board exams. My parents and I compromised that if I finished my course, they'd let me study in UP as a fallback course just in case,” she says in an interview with Herword.com.

Javier uses oil on canvas, utilizing colors that are as vivid and alive in painting images of death, misery, dysfuctional relationships, and emotional violence.

Javier blames ner nursing background for her recurrent themes but denies having suicidal tendencies nor being witness to violent deaths.

Other than that, Javier points to films such as Knife in the Water by Ingmar Bergman, or Kisapmata, Insiang and Himala by Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal as influences and inspirations.

“Every painting I make has a story but this story is a vague one, and it only lasts while I am painting; it doesn't make sense at all once I've completed the work,” Javier was quoted by artsasia.com.

Javier is a a recipient of the 2003 13 Artists Awards by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.