By WINNIE VELASQUEZ

It took him some time to pursue his first love – painting but PJ Jalandoni was just biding his time. After graduating with an accounting degree and going into business, he kept his love affair with the muse by hanging around with his artist friends, attending an art workshop or two, and building an art collection along the way.

In time, his friends told him that since he has a very good eye for art, he should take up painting himself. Now in his mid-thirties, he is enrolled at the UP College of Fine Arts and has been working alongside his much younger classmates, relishing the interaction and creative stimulation.

"Face Value" is his first solo show and may be viewed until tomorrow at Gallery Nine at SM Megamall Artwalk.

On exhibit are six huge oils paintings (5 ft. x 4 ft.) all done in black and white. The images leap out of the walls and grab the viewer, pulling him into the gallery.

"I purposely worked with black and white to make a statement, to define my work. I want to emphasize not so much technique but tonal valuations to bring out the nuances of the subject," he says.

A photography enthusiast, Jalandoni saw an old magazine in a vintage shop and found inspiration in the old black and white portraits.

He counts Titian as well as contemporary artists Chuck Close and Jenny Saville as major influences.

"These are post painterly paintings reinventing themselves in the whirlpool of the present. It is like returning painting to its origin at the same time making it new. It is as though a Titian had mated with a Chuck Close before our eyes and it was a love match. A return to painting mediated by photograph but not in a simple way," he says.

"In this day of digital photography, we rarely see black and white portraits. What I did was to use the images in those old photographs and combine them with elements of contemporary art. The effect of light and shadow achieved with strong tonal contrast reveals a soft side rarely offered to cameras," Jalandoni adds.