Mother and daughter artists Ethel Dimacuha and Camille dela Rosa share not only a familial bond but also a deep affinity with nature, which has long served as a wellspring of their creative impulses and inspiration for their respective artistic practices.
This exhibition titled, ‘Interwoven’ at the Nami Gallery, explores the common passion and bond of these two artists who are dedicated to their craft but also explore their own interests and passions translated and filtered onto the canvas. In this particular presentation, they also turn their full attention to nature, exploring its forms and meanings. The show presents recent oil and acrylic paintings from this pairing. These artworks also offer insight into the ways they work both collaboratively and independently, while revealing the distinct and remarkable qualities of their respective oeuvres, shaped and refined over years of artistic practice.
Dimacuha, a former art professor, is best known for her vibrant geometric semi abstraction in which nature and recognizable forms are fragmented into angular planes and saturated color fields. Dela Rosa, on the other hand, is known for her figurative surrealist practice and has established a distinctive presence within the genre over the years. Here, she makes a slight return to a more impressionistic approach and style. She presents flowers not as delicate, decorative subjects but as dense, almost bodily forms. They share a heightened sense of materiality, with details and shadows rendered through visible, expressive brushwork.
When nature is filtered through two different artists, it becomes a space where different perspectives can coexist. Their approaches may be distinct, almost like yin and yang. One of them expresses life through vibrant color and energetic forms, while the other finds meaning in quieter gestures, softer forms, and the coexistence of beauty and fragility. Such is the case here.
Their styles do not compete with one another. Instead, they create a kind of balance. Together, the paintings become a conversation between mother and daughter, revealing two different ways of seeing and interpreting the world while remaining deeply connected through a shared source.
Dimacuha says : ‘I use very bright colors because that is simply who I am: energetic, cheerful, and full of life. For me, color is not merely decorative. It carries spiritual and emotional energy. When I surround myself with vibrant colors and translate them onto the canvas, I find a sense of happiness, strength, and optimism. Nature, as I see it, is full of vitality and possibility, and I want my paintings to carry that same energy.’
Meanwhile, dela Rosa, painting flowers is a way of expressing how she sees life: vibrant and warm at times, quiet and subdued at others. Her works juxtapose soft, flowing petals with broken and fragmented forms, reflecting life’s fragility and constant change. Yet even amid what shatters, she sees the possibility of continuing, growing, and ultimately blooming.
Their backgrounds are as disparate as well.
With one foot in the academic field, Dimacuha earned a master’s degree in Art History at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and went on to teach Art History and Humanities at St. Scholastica’s College, Technological University of the Philippines, and Lyceum of the Philippines, notably representing the latter as a Teacher Grantee in the JICA 21st Century Japan-Philippine Teachers Goodwill Program. Her artistic practice, meanwhile, began taking shape in 1981, when she started exhibiting her work. Since then, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions and mounted nine solo shows, steadily building a practice that bridges her scholarly background with her life as an artist. In 1987, she earned the Third Prize in the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Art Competition-an accolade that reflected her sustained focus and commitment to her practice, as recognized by her peers.
In the art community, Dela Rosa is also often introduced as the daughter of the noted painter, Ibarra Y. Dela Rosa, a distinction that can be both a privilege and a burden. Her identity as an artist inevitably places her under the long shadow of her father’s legacy, bringing with it the pressure to measure up, distinguish herself, and ultimately be recognized on the strength of her own work.
Worth mentioning however is that despite being self-taught and given her age, dela Rosa is quite accomplished herself. She already had 23 solo exhibitions and participated in different group exhibits held in various parts of the world including Paris, Belgium, Germany, London and Holland. Key recognitions include : Honorable Mention at Art Association of the Philippines Competition (2005); Top 40 Philippine Art Awards (2009); 2nd place at Pagalingan Pinay Art Competition (2009).
In 2017, her steam punk painting became the official CD and DVD album cover of the international rock band Sepultura’s ‘Machine Messiah’.Her work was also included in Phantastische Venus 2015 (Viechtach, Germany) Book, Featuring 70 Surrealist Female Artists Around the World.
At the heart of INTERWOVEN is the idea that connection does not require sameness. The exhibition brings together two distinct artistic practices shaped by different temperaments, visual languages, and ways of experiencing the natural world. For one artist, nature becomes an expression of energy, optimism, and the emotional power of color. For the other, it becomes a reflection on fragility, transformation, and the persistence of life even through moments of rupture.
When asked how blood relations and and the sense of being part of the same family figure into their respective practices, and whether these connections are predetermined or instead constructed through their artistic dialogue, both agree: ‘It wasn’t something predetermined. We don’t plan it out. We simply paint what we feel and what our individual personalities bring to the canvas.’
What emerges is a visual conversation between two artists who share a familial history and a common love for nature and yet they arrive at their own individual ways of seeing it. Their works stand side by side, not as reflections of one another, but as parallel forms of growth: separate, connected, and continually revealing.
More importantly, the exhibition reveals a partnership rooted in continual making and creative curiosity unique to this family.
The exhibit runs September 8 to 20, 2026 at Nami Art Gallery, Pioneer Center, Kapitolyo Pasig City.