Fitz Herrera

Fitz Herrera, a dedicated abstract artist was born in Caloocan, raised in Nueva Vizcaya until high school and then relocated again to Manila for his college education. It can be said that his initiation and exposure to partly rural and then city life provided a good contrast that nurtured his creativity. Growing up and maturing in These immersive and disparately distinct environments and their textures mixed with his experiences profoundly shaped his thinking and aesthetic character; the province being quiet and then later Caloocan being a more squalid replete with the harsh realities of urban life and economic struggles. Also, he was raised in a strictly conservative Catholic tradition which provided him with the sensibilities and contradictions in his later life that would sharpen his instincts, thinking, and emotional acuity.    

From 1996 to 2000, he was formally trained at the University of the East, College of Fine Arts where he majored in Advertising and learned the canons of the art world here and abroad.  At first, he started producing figurative works and even won some accolades including the Metrobank Art Awards where he landed at third place in 2004 among others.  In hindsight, he considered this phase to be his amateur experience in art.

Eventually, Herrera found more freedom in abstraction and it is also where he gained some critical attention and traction in his career.  His abstraction at first felt very spare, measured, a bit minimal, and restrained until it later eventually turned more lively and evoked freedom which he aspired for and developed over time.  Historically and also an artistic tact, his titles don’t show on the surface of his work but the ideas, feelings, and attitudes are certainly revealed in the way they are painted and executed involving intense at times even quiet confrontations between pigment and surface.

His first solo show, “Divisions” was inspired by his realization of his first taste of a professional environment that was filled with so much segregation and cliques. Always, his art would be products of personal circumstances and reflections on experiences at a certain time. Effectively, his work is a private language, grammar or narrative is known only to him.

To Herrera, the personal will always be the key themes, context, and wisdom of his art always capturing moments of candor and sincerity. Naming exhibition titles and even works after his personal situations, they are bent on life reflections, his triumphs, his pains, his damages, and his interests. Although he believes that artists and creative individuals should have some kind of faith as a stimulus to live and act, he believes that experience is the sole driver of his creativity. They are imprints of his journey as an artist and as a person. They are not triggered by his social surroundings but more so by the weight and the effects of his own experiences that he amplifies on canvas.   

Music, as both ritual and experience, also plays a part in his creative life and his sustained process in artmaking.  In fact, he initially opted to be trained in the Conservatory of Music at the University of Santo Tomas (UST).  But he would live a musical life playing as a drummer to various bands. Later his musical inclinations would have a special attention in his third solo exhibition which inspired his inclination being a musician along with his favorite songs.