Nineveh

We visited an art gallery in Santa Cruz, Laguna which was referred to us by the owner of the B&B resort owner, Ms. Vinya. So off we went to the Nineveh gallery, (owner Louie Sevilla) hoping to take a look at some of the local oil paintings by local artists. Sepin and I scored a couple of paintings - she got one by Brenda Fajardo who we actually took a class from in college, and I got one from an artist named Dominic Rubio. We got to immerse ourselves in the world of art for an afternoon. We looked through all his collection on the second floor, in the shed, there were paintings, collages, everywhere - some were lifesize up to 5 feet tall, some were solid wood carvings - It was another memorable discovery...(I didnt take pictures of the gallery itself since I didnt want to infringe on the artist's copyright, but trust me...it was amazing). He did have us take a picture of one of the paintings because of its interesting effects....

this was a 2d painting but when you take a photo, it seems to jump out at you in full 3d effect! totally unexpected.

this was in his garden...

this was the painting I bought.

The gallery owner, Louie Sevilla, took this photo of us three...

this is a Philippine eagle (not endangered.)

He had a monkey in his backyard (sorry I am not good with my zoology)

an artist friend made this tableau for him. the sto nino in the middle is made from reclaimed ivory from billiard balls.

The gallery was named Nineveh after the death of his 6 year old son a few years ago. He turned to religion and made his home into a seminary. The gallery used to be a monastery for a small sect of monks who later on disbanded. Louie was one of them. After the monastery was disbanded, he turned it into a gallery since he had a lot of artist friends, most of whom are local Laguna artists. He served us some good strong coffee and kalamay while we conferenced outside about which paintings to buy. Pretty heady stuff for an aspiring artist like me!

Thanks for looking!