1975 / Oil and acrylic on shaped canvas / 190 x 157 cm / Artist: Nestor Vinluan / Cultural Center of the Philippines collection

The interest of this painting lies in the spirit of experimentation and the quest for expressive form underlying it. It is one of the first examples of shaped canvases, as its shape echoes that of an oval dresser mirror with side hinges on a wooden framework standing on a broad horizontal base.

The play of tones creates an unstable, shifting, dreamlike quality, as in the frame that gradually modulates from lavender at the sides to orange rose at the base. The oval mirror with its mottled blue-violet field is at once surface and depth, suggesting a marine landscape with delicate corals and seafoam. Taken as a mirror for the contemplation of the self, it reflects not surface appearance and likeness but the inner landscape of the psyche or the unconscious, unfamiliar, and awesome nocturnal sea, undifferentiated and without reassuring landmarks. The ragged upper edges of the frame serve to effect a transition between this sea imagery and the real world. The geometric quality of the frame with its right angles, restores stability and order; hence, conscious reason. Moreover, the transition from deep lavender, the color of sleep and the unconscious, to rose-orange, the color of dawn and reality, at the base implies the emergence into consciousness and coming to terms with a new day.