PAULINA CONSTANCIA AND NAÏVE ART
Paulina Constancia (b. 1970, Cebu City) is a Filipino-Canadian creative spirit with many different mediums of expression. Her experience in design and music coupled with her educational background in communications and languages developed in her a visual storyteller who finds form, rhythm and a story waiting to be told wherever she goes. Along the way, she heard people refer to her art expression as naïve. Little did she know that years later her unique art style together with that of seven other artists from around the world would one day be celebrated in an international meeting of naïve artists in Europe.
Paulina defines naïf/naïve art as a unique visual thumbprint that comes naturally from an artist who chooses to create from the heart and not be constrained by rules of perspective and realism. The naïf artist’s canvas is nothing but a playground where the creative spirit is free to play. Subjects and sentiments dictate their form, color and essence. The naïf artist’s hand just follows…
In partnership with The Sanctuary, MoNA endeavors to promote the love and care of nature and awaken and inspire our creative nature.
Paulina Constancia Then and Now, still in love with bananas! (Right Photo taken at The Sanctuary)
The Early Inspiration of Paulina’s Naïve Art Expression
Paulina spent her early years on a street named Caimito (Star Apple). Although it is within the city limits of Cebu, Paulina enjoyed a very simple rural-like existence surrounded by fruit trees, chickens, pigs, ducks, cats and lots of
‘Irong Bisaya’ (mongrel dogs). There was always food to eat – they had star apple, mango, guava, jackfruit, papaya, santol, banana and Kamunggay trees. Paulina says, “In those days, nobody seemed to tire of fruit and a hearty bowl of
Kamunggay soup.”
Paulina recalls how their home was the neighborhood playground. “All the little ones on our street came to our place to play. We spent endless hours on the swing- swaying and screaming. We also had a kiddie pool that took forever to fill and so we each got a bucket to fill with water from the bomba (handpump in Cebuano). The sooner we filled the pool, the sooner we could all swim”.
“If we were not in school, we were home playing with the kids in the neighborhood. And Sundays was for church and all the fun things surrounding a ‘visit to the parish’ which included eating cotton candy, popcorn, peanuts and of course – ‘dirty ice cream’ (Cebuano term for cheap, locally made ice cream sold by a street vendor). “For family adventures- every other Sunday or so- we hit the beach…and we would spend the whole day in our tubes in the water, that was when there wasn’t a hole in the ozone layer. We didn’t even know that such a layer existed. The only hole we feared was a hole in our salbabida (Cebuano for ‘inner tube’) for that would end our fun in the sun.”
PAULINA CONSTANCIA MoNA 
Hello Paulina,
Nice meeting you. Thanks for sharing your stories. 🙂