How should one look at things when plunged into a time when finding beauty and meaning, and even their prospects is made difficult? Where does one find them in their seeming absence? Should one change where to look, or should one change how one perceives?

The ability to perceive comes with the responsibility to be aware, and is burdened with the human flaw of being limited, which can be a stab at human pride, and a fragile pride rejects the idea of being less, thus the responsibility to be aware is rejected as well. With unawareness comes unreliable perception; unreliable perception makes a myopic view, and there is nothing but twisted truth, untruth even, in front of myopic eyes. What then is beauty and meaning borne of untruth, but sacrilege?

In Warmth of the Old and Ugly, the artist seeks out beauty by embracing his limitedness. He forgoes his power as the creator with dominion over what his work should become. Instead he lets the work create itself with him – a partnership of sorts – his hand taking instructions from the work on how it’s supposed to come to be, the work taking hints from his desire to find the beautiful. The painting process becomes a mutually guided translation of the object of beauty into a spectacle that needs no language; free of any preconceived notions the artist has of what is beautiful. By sharing the power, the artist partially mutes the conscious, giving voice to latent thoughts and sensations, achieving better awareness, thus widening his perception and his reach, which eventually leads him to find the beauty that once seemed elusive.

Beauty he finds by diving into a sea of memories and reveries, of what was and what could be, reaching into depths where stills that bring feelings of joy, and warmth, and comfort, and hope, existing in their own spheres of time took shelter – scenes waiting to be plucked and held close and revisited – hot steam permeating the night air holds the beauty of innocence and familial contentment, the sweet scent of flowers tinged with the earthy smell of three day old water suggests the beauty of a lover, a rosy landscape cradles the beauty of yearning for a better future, the old and ugly was once young and beautiful. The memory of beauty is beauty in itself, and reveries, however bittersweet, is but the same – a door that leads to an easier life waiting to be opened, a peaceful time, freedom from all that weighs one down.

The desire for freedom comes hand in hand with Paolo Icasas’ desire for beauty – to create images that seem boundless, to paint feelings more than just images, to bypass time, and make the past exist with the present, not as an idea but as a visual gesture in his work, which the artist achieves with his swaths and scrapes making their way along, as if to disturb, the vigor of strokes and the softness of lathers of paint which are distinguishing traits of his paintings. These swaths and scrapes serve as windows for the audience to peek into that they may revel at intimate details of the process only known between the artist and his work. Being in the presence of beauty is an awe inspiring experience, but glimpsing how it came to be, its history, is a privilege.

When one recognizes beauty as what it once was and what it will someday be, one would see that beauty is never gone. Beauty is a strange all encompassing force that transcends time, and space, and logic. When one is caught at a point in life where meaning is difficult to find, beauty can be enough. Beauty is enough.

• Marionne Contreras