My wife Dadai is an artist, and a unique one at that: while she is adept at media like watercolor, pastel, oil, and charcoal, she is also one of the very few people who paint with soil. Yes, soil, as in the very ground we walk on.
She started with this new medium in 2000, and two years later she was interviewed by Rowena Burgos for the Philippine Daily Inquirer:
Earthy Art
By Rowena C. Burgos
This article appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on July 13, 2002.
Dadai Joaquin is one of soil painting’s flame keepers in Davao. The ray of hope she offers is further brightened by two other artists, Raul Bendit and Romualdo de la Cruz, who try to keep the same faith.
In her bare-all approach, Dadai creates works that are simultaneously rough and lyrical. She makes jagged emotional landscapes in colors that range from earthy to bilious.
Dadai uses yellow and red soil from Malaybalay, black from Samal, peach from Camiguin, and green from Bukidnon.
“Using soil as a medium is not that popular yet, but the technique is very easy,” Dadai says. “It’s messy but not fussy. You don’t have to use an easel, and you just use ordinary brushes. Soil painting is cheap. It becomes expensive when you run out of soil and you have to travel to other places to get it.”
Dadai dilutes the soil in water and waits for it to dry. She uses glue so the hues of the soil won’t easily fade. The finished work on thick katsa (canvas) can even be folded or rolled without any danger of the art piece getting destroyed.
The process and making people appreciate the medium are a struggle. “My friend Raul (Bendit) sells his works for only 1,000 pesos apiece so he can have money to buy basic necessities,” Dadai says. “I try to help him uplift the art by selling his works on the web.”
Well-documented
Click on the image to go to the Gallery of Dadai's soil paintings
Dadai used to work with oil, watercolor, and pastel.* “When I finally found my medium, I found it hard to stop painting with soil.”
Since she began her love affair with soil in 2000, she has taken the emotions and events that have come her way and fervently documented each passage, with all of their anxiety and struggle, in her paintings.
Dadai’s art is all about being a mother, daughter, and lover, and the intense sweep of emotions produced by such strong attachments. Under these circumstances, one feels both “in control and out,” as she has said of herself.
Although autobiographical in nature, the paintings are far from literal. Merging spontaneity and structure, Dadai conveys her meaning through the use of loose brushstrokes and a wealth of abstracted images. Themes of life and death, resurrection and redemption have appeared in her work again and again over the years.
One cannot help but admire Dadai for her ferocious conviction. Her works appear to be all about life and its struggles. But they may also be considered as nothing but an artist’s determination to push soil and painting as far as they will go.
Dadai manages to make paintings about love and beauty (or their absence) that are free of the taint of sentimentality. While the paintings are aggressive, their energy comes not from anger but strength, and they reveal, beneath it all, an endearing vulnerability.
* Dadai continues to work with other mediums. For a sampling of her work in pastel, watercolor, oil, and charcoal, click on the photo at right.
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