In two years, 2019-2021, with the pandemic and the caregive, I finished all my book illustrations today, 12:06 PM, Sunday, 11 April 2021, all two hundred nine (209) of them
Maycapal: Philippine Mythopoeia. From the timelessness of the cloud archipelago to the Philippine Republic of 1946.
Here’s to the anitos, diwatas, Indarapatra, to the babaylans, to Philippine flora and fauna, to myths, folklife and folklore, to the proud pre-conquest natives of the archipelago, to our Austronesian heritage, to the imagined Filipino and the Philippines!
To Thomas Bulfinch, to Edith Hamilton, to Hieronymus Bosch, to the early printers and typographers, to Cesare Ripa, to the medieval traditions brought by the holy orders, to renaissance humanists, heretics and alchemists.
To Francisco Balagtas, to Damian Domingo, to Jose Honorato Lozano, to Jose Rizal, Juan Luna and Felix R. Hidalgo.
To Gaiman, to Pullman, to Le Guin.
To semiotics, to Umberto Eco.
To archetypes, to Carl Jung.
To folklore, to Maximo D. Ramos, to E. Arsenio Manuel, to Damiana L. Eugenio.
To history, heraldry, comparative literature, religion and mythology.
To museums, archives, and libraries.
I owe to them my love of reading, drawing, and imagining.
I have been working on my book about Philippine Mythology and Folklore entitled “MAYCAPAL” since 2019. The corona virus pandemic of 2020 threw a wrench on my writing, illustrating and productivity like with the rest of the world. I got my groove back and am back on track. ✍️
