Fil Delacruz (b. 1950), known for his rich velvety mezzotint prints, have combined practically the same elements to the art of painting but this time producing colorful versions of a world that he has created within his frames.

Delacruz sensitively throws in all the important elements of creating art (i.e. form, line, texture, composition) to give us full, sumptuous pictures that celebrate both subject matter and the process of artmaking.

Delacruz uses nature or Kalikasan as a major source for his works, incorporating in it the image of a Filipino female deity known as Diwata. With this combination, the artist has been able to create a wellspring of pictures that allow us to experience the colorful and bountiful natural setting of a rich Filipino tribal culture known as Manuvu or Manobo, with roots in Southern Cotabato.

Delacruz' paintings are like dream snatches which are presented and composed in a lyrical fashion, with the artist taking great care in the handling of color and varied textures to combine and compose one harmonious melody. His detailed rendetions of wood grains, feather tips, conical shells or petal drops form minute parts of a Diwata song that deeply captures the melodies of nature.

He draws from his Diwata (originally inspired by a young woman named Gunzal, a Manuvu native) all the elements of the tribal, the primitive and the naive quietness of one who is close to nature. There is richness both of the earth and the ritualistic adornment that drapes the goddess/princess against the backdrop of the tribal forest.

In order to fully explore his subject matter, Delacruz creates from printing and printmaking - two types of visual mediums which he finds both satisfying. The appreciation for Delacruz' works has grown immensely as the artist continues to exhibit paintings which are not just concerned with indigenous colors and forms but with indigenous materials as well, such as handmade paper from banana fiber instead of the traditional canvas.

Early in his career, he was hailed by a critic as one of the country's most prolific printmakers with mastery over the mezzotint, a printmaking process described as laborious that few artist can summon the courage or command the necessary staying power to carry it through.

Having been initiated into the discipline of artmaking, Delacruz would naturally approach painting the same way - producing meticulously applied pigments on canvasses that speak of richness and design.

A keen interest in the science of colors is what attracts Delacruz to paintings. Printmaking which is usually in black and white, allows him to explore only the interplay of lights and shadows across his proofs. But painting, he says, enables him to explore the varied characteristics of color and to experiment with the effects of certain kinds of color against other colors, and thus allows him to explore much more because, as he emphasizes, "there is no limit to color in Nature".

Delacruz has a meticulous eye and hand for details that is easily recognizable in his works, but which does not rob his pictures of the dream-like quality. Whether off the press, or on the canvass, the pictures he composes are realistic images in the dreamlike snatches, sometimes not readily available to the viewer.

Delacruz' works clearly exhibit the artist's skill over the basics: confident handling of medium that enables him to succesfully duplicate and capture what is in his mind, and the attitude for play and experimentation within the capabilities of his materials.

When he won the first prize in the Annual Student Art Competition of the Philippines in 1971, Delacruz was convinced that artmaking was all he wanted to do. In 1972, he was introduced to the finer techniques of printmaking and since then, nothing could stop him from creating art.

He has continued to master his craft, working on the finer techniques of printmaking as well as the finer points of color-handling in painting.

In 1992, he received a grant from the French Embassy for a workshop in Lithography, on of the branches of printmaking, and was conferred as one of the Thirteen Artist Awardees by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

His works have been exhibited in Girona, Spain; Beijing; Hong Kong; Bratislava and Prague in Czechoslovakia; London; Glasgow; New York; Fukuoka, Japan; Baghdad; and Paris.

A two-term president of the Philippine Association of Printmakers and a former faculty member of the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts - teaching studio art and printmaking - Fil Delacruz finds teaching art as fulfilling as creating it.