Leyenda

In Leyenda, Jessa Balag invites us to revisit the legends that have shaped her imagination since childhood, blending the mythical and the mystical with the everyday. Each oil on canvas painting is a rich tapestry of familiar stories transformed into something new, filled with easily recognizable characters and objects from our own lives. Balag’s astute compositions breathe fresh life into age-old tales, prompting us to see ourselves in the allegorical narratives that once seemed distant and untouchable.

Mythological scenes in paintings often depict gods, heroes, and creatures from ancient legends, reflecting human traits like courage, love, and betrayal, explaining how particular animals, trees, and flowers came into being, and why the sky is blue or the ocean deep. The Renaissance saw how artists blended ancient myths with deeper moral and societal issues. Over time, these scenes evolved to include political themes, with 18th-century artists portraying rulers as gods, while later centuries saw a shift to ethnic legends.

Similarly, Filipino artists inspired by local myths and legends integrate cultural heritage into their works. Carlos “Botong” Francisco and Rodel Tapaya blended folklore with visual narratives, much like how classical mythological art used symbols, contrasts, and allegories to evoke deeper meanings. Brenda Fajardo and Imelda Cajipe-Endaya also emphasized the richness of local stories, weaving myth into modern contexts, and often injecting their pieces with modern concerns such as family, struggle, and empowerment, merging arcane and ancient narratives with contemporary issues.

It seems these great artists have paved the way for this exhibiting artist's new explorations.
Balag’s brushstrokes flow like oral tradition itself, loose yet purposeful, capturing moments where reality and fantasy meet, her figures keeping the glowing skin tones they have been imbued from the start of her art career. Whether it's a legend of creation or a story of transformation, Leyenda encourages us to imagine, reinterpret, and add our voices to the endless cycle of storytelling. In this new chapter in Balag's creative journey, the artist draws
from known and self-interpreted legends, using them not only to make sense of the
compartmentalized chaos of one's everyday life, but to reach her audiences as she expands her comfort zone and her arsenal of fresh imagery.

Through Leyenda, Balag explores how things came to be and how we might rewrite or reinterpret these stories in the context of our modern lives. Her paintings nudge us to ask: Why are things the way they are? Could we be the new storytellers, weaving our own myths from the fabric of everyday experiences?