Awit sa Ambon, Rom Villaseran.

What I like most about Villaseran’s painting is the deftness with which he appears to wrestle a crowded stable of muscular influences and techniques into inviting, illustrative form.

A browse through his portfolio quickly assembles a queue of candidates for his style’s derivation: the distinctive airbrushed illustrative work of 80s fantasy genre cover art; the illusory, subverted perspective of the surrealists; tableau that invite comparison with ancient Greek artworks where tragic, epic myth was economically condensed into single scenes and the studied anatomy of renaissance portraiture.

On paper, perhaps like the description above, this brew sounds too rich to stomach - at hand, it is compelling.