Former beauty queen Vida Doria Legaspi is observing her 21st year as a painter with an ongoing exhibition called “Tapestry of Woven Dreams” at the second level atrium of The Podium on ADB Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City. The exhibit with the group Katha Arts runs until May 28.
Before she took up painting and became involved in the visual arts, Legaspi was already into creative endeavors. She continues to design and manufacture high-fashion clothes for women. This business venture got her exposed to colors, textures, forms, lines and balance.
She said, “I have been doing that for more than 55 years! I was also collecting paintings and other works of art.”
But in 2005, her older brother and mother passed away just two months apart of each other.
An artist friend of Legaspi noticed the sadness written all over her face and invited her to join the church activity “Paint to Heal”. She instantly fell in love with painting oil on canvas. The rest, as they say, is history.
She trained with Nestor Villanueva, a two-time Shell painting contest awardee and a brother-in-law of two famous painters, Romulo Galicano and Sofronio “SYM” Mendoza. He was her mentor for more than 15 years.
What she learned from him that she still keeps in mind includes for her to develop her own style by being an original. She said, “That is why I did not become his clone.”
From him she learned, too, the science of color. She said, “There are colors that make a powerful painting when combined or contrasted together. He taught me the importance of lights and shadows, shapes, sizes to create distance, depth and also the importance of massing.”
She likes the works of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh. Among local artists, she favors Galicano, Sym and Norma Belleza.
Of the internationally renowned artists, she has seen their works in museums, even including a visit to Monet’s garden in Giverny, France.
She added, “Van Gogh’s works are powerful because of his bold brush strokes, very strong sense of color and great perspectives.”
Her exhibits, both solo and group, are for philanthropic goals like raising funds to help people defray expensive medical costs, scholarships and meet the needs of financially challenged individuals/families.
For this exhibit at The Podium, she chose ANCOP Foundation as beneficiary for the reason that it is fully aligned with her art and life purposes.
The group Katha has two other beneficiaries. Legaspi’s personal advocacies are “health, education and a sense of humanity” to quote Fr. Jeff Villarin in one of his Homilies.
She still dreams of the many subjects she can paint. She said, “It might take a lifetime, and yet it is not enough. It takes a while for me to finish a piece! My sisters Beng and Paulette, who are both artists in their own way, sometimes think that a certain painting is already finished, yet I kept editing endlessly until I get what I am looking for.”
She also wants to do stylized portraits, interpretations of fashion, more still life with various subjects, homey homes, patios and verandas “the Vida Doria way, and explore colors that I seldom work with,” she said.
The challenges she wants to explore are working on larger canvases, more on-the-spot paintings, which is not easy nowadays due to climate change, and to paint the many photos she has taken during her travels.