The personal encounter, the act of witness – these are elements crucial to the art of Edgardo Lantin. He is committed, first and foremost, to seeing the world, with all its endlessly fascinating forms, colors, and textures, for himself. This commitment is perhaps most readily apparent in his continued practice of painting en plein air, which demands sensitivity to the fluctuations of atmosphere as well as concerted agility of hand and eye, but it is also evident in his more studio-based work, informed as it is by first-hand observation and photography of – and, at times, immersion with – his subjects.

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Lantin’s approach to the blank canvas is driven by the impulse of not so much mechanical transcription as faithful mediation of what he has beheld, and involves the employment of skills that he has honed, with remarkable discipline, to a high degree in the course of more than four decades of painting. This exhibition, mounted in two venues, presents a selection of his landscapes, set mostly in Vancouver, Canada, where he resides, and his paintings of everyday life in the Philippines – indebted, to an extent, to the notion of the pastoral – with the majority grounded in events that he had happened upon while traveling to different parts of Luzon: Quezon, Rizal, Bataan, and Batangas, from which he hails. Several of these pieces are being shown to the public for the first time, Lantin having made a habit of producing studies and finished paintings in the name of refining his craft, irrespective of commissions and other professional opportunities.

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The same hallmarks that characterize Lantin’s portraits, for which he is best known, are manifest in this suite of works: diligence with technique, patience with medium, respect for subject, and interest in emotion. His naturalistic style may be located downstream of the rich traditions of academic realism and impressionism, and is distinguished by his deft handling of light as it plays across, defines, and suffuses a range of volumes and surfaces during a particular moment: consider, for instance, how he portrays the variegated green shimmer of leaves and blades of grass, the pearlescent glint of freshly caught fish, or the coppery-gold glow of a young woman’s complexion.

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Lantin’s abiding concern with context and environment, and his position as a migrant artist, make of his career, with its many accomplishments, a valuable node to examine in the relay of representations of, as well as between, Canada and the Philippines, suggesting as it does the inestimable significance of heightening attentiveness to, and intensifying engagement with, the immediate, the quotidian, and the local, even as one remains mindful of the broader sweeps of culture and history.