Classically-trained painter Jomir Tabudlong’s practice largely revolves around that: the lessons of classical painting and its continuing legacy among today’s artists. While his recent body of work displays adeptness in the figurative sense of subject matter, his art also employs the use of lines in various lengths and colors. This motif recalls his time as an art student, where lines were one of the elements he was most challenged by.

While developing this combination of subject and line, he found himself challenged by the purpose and existence of classical themes. It was at this point that he realized, what he needed was a revival.

Study after study, one experiment after the other, he began an exercise of executing a painting from the classical canon using a monochromatic palette – in its entirety – on a canvas. He would then paint the same or another work on the canvas, overlapping with the previous. This gesture created a puzzle-like composition, with varied symmetries and grids. What he ended up with tapped into that notion of a revival, re-presenting a classical image with a contemporary approach. But he wasn’t done yet. Utilizing his now-signature line work, meticulously done by hand guided by one ruler (most artists rely on masking tape, with the ease of discarding errors), he embellishes the canvas with spectra of vibrant colours. The arrangements form prismatic, almost crystalline structures that hover above the revived classical imagery. As this seemingly holographic layer straddles the compositions beneath, closer inspection reveals specks of color, meant to further bridge the classical and the contemporary.

Throughout his practice so far, Tabudlong has explored varied methods and visuals. In breaking up a fixed image, he harnesses the shards – irregular as they may be. Perhaps with some serendipity, the edges find each other, and together with an intuitive line spectrum, the pieces align.

by Koki Lxx