DOMINIC RUBIO

Dominic Rubio was born in Paete, Laguna, a lakeshore town long famous for its woodcarving tradition. He studied at the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts, major in commercial arts. He first worked briefly as artist in one of the largest multi-national advertising agencies in the country, Puris Lintas of Manila. Later, he was invited to live and work in the Pearl Farm, an upscale resort located Davao del Sur. It was in the course of his part-time job as in-house artist that he found time to travel around the Caraga Region in Northern Mindanao, learning about the various cultural groups in these places such as the Mandaya and the Tiboli tribes. He also lived, in this stint, with the Bilaans and the Badjaos, who live farther down south of Mindanao.

Rubio first exhibited his works at the Ad Infinitum, delving on the subject of women, the mother and child, the ethnic Filipina as depicted in her day-to-day chores amid the surrounding landscape. A major show in 2003 at the Galerie Joaquin explored the artist’s favored subject of Filipino women in the context of an evolving sensibility as shown in the figures and faces from an earlier period at the turn of the century as well as a suite of updated portraits replete with glamour from the distaff side. The artist likewise had portraits of young girls, disturbing faces and figures from the same period and milieu, the quintessential symbol of innocence and naivete at a time of sociopolitical upheaval.

Challenged by the possibilities of the subject he has pursued, Rubio has in the process captured the essence of womanhood and the gentility of a race whose identity has been usurped by the ill effects of colonization. Rubio, not unlike his subject, is constantly evolving and in time will have come into his own, his transformation as finely articulated as those figures in the adjoining landscape.