This exhibition “Celebration” – aptly titled – is not only a celebration of the accolades of a painter on his 65th birthday, but celebrates individuality, painterly expression, the organic, and the cerebral.  Over the years, Lebajo’s work has been described as having a ‘compelling sense of organic vitality’ or ‘fluid energy’.  It is this vitality that we see again in this new body of paintings, several of which echo earlier suites of work in a whiff of sentimentality, but as Lebajo would attest, never consciously.  

For example, his new portrait “Angel” uses a familiar golden solar-hue off-set by jarring green eye shadow framing an intense gaze. We immediately recall Lebajo’s most successful exhibition, ‘Kara’ 2003, and its oversized portraits. As Lebajo says, “She looks like an angel … this is a mind portrait”, forever true to his internal vision.  

Similarly in the new paintings “April Bloom” and “Untitled”, a geometric grid is stretched across the surface, bulging in spatial tension. Under this formal composition is a portrait caged, a surprise familiar to Lebajo’s work; and flighty brush marks - splashes of colour on a black background - creating a pulse and movement in the paintings, also signature for Lebajo over the years.  It is this strong graphic simplicity – the grid - which call us to wander back to Lebajo’s earliest works from the 1970-80s and his embrace of geometric abstraction.  This is an artist with an extraordinary breadth of expression and memory. 

A contemporary survey of Lebajo’s work wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of his characteristic still lifes and ‘landscapes of the mind’, as he calls them, those ethereal tapestries of vivid colour that oscillate between reality and abstraction.  In the painting “New Year”, he turns to the iconic vase form celebrated in his show, ‘Still Lifes and Dreams’, 2001. But the new paintings develop his imaginary plant forms with an authority beyond ambiguous biomolecules.  Lebajo’s painting is a continuing organic evolution. 

Although disorientating and fractured in subject, Lebajo’s paintings never ostracise the viewer; they are common enough to anchor to: a face, a vase, fruits and plants. There is an ‘electricity’ that goes beyond his acid palette; an energy that rests in his unique vision. There is no ode to art movements, current trends or artistic influences for Lebajo. His painted space is one of freedom, fantasy and solitude.  We are the lucky occasional visitors to what renowned writer Alice Guillermo calls, ‘magical sleights-of-hand’.  The exhibition “Celebration” marks the career of a mature and accomplished painter. 

For exhibition enquiries, please contact Mimi Santos or Chona Galvez at 831-9990 or email Duemila@mydestiny.net