Beyond

Nona Garcia transforms an original photograph by MM Yu into her monumental landscape painting, Beyond, (2014). In her characteristic photo-realistic style, she paints the mundane image of construction materials piled on the ground. The pale colours of a cloudy sky contrast with the tonal greys of the sidewalk and the large concrete wall that stands behind the heaping mounds of gravel and sand.

In keeping with the great traditions of landscape paintings from the Western canon, Garcia's mounds of gravel and sand echo the idyllic hillsides of pastoral scenes of old. In contrast to the grittiness of the construction site, she renders the sky in soft, pale colours to suggest a calm and peaceful atmosphere. Her contemporary landscape is a response to to the rapid rate of urbanisation in Metro Manila, a monumental tribute to the basic materials from which the concrete structures of cities are made. Concrete, the most widely used substance in the world (second only to water), is the foundation of modern development, offering shelter against natural forces and building structures for communities to grow and prosper. In her painting, the grey wall and sidewalk that dominate the canvas allude to the environmental concerns posed by urbanisation, which threatens to obscure and overwhelm the natural world beyond.