Filipino Artist Ronald Ventura Is Making Connections Across Cultures

Like many emerging artists, early in his career Ronald Ventura tended to sell everything he produced. Now that his reputation is firmly established and he is dreaming of one day setting up a contemporary art museum in Manila, the 39-year-old auction star has found himself in the unenviable position of going back to collectors to buy back key pieces.

Ventura has seen the auction prices for his recent work soar in the past few years. The 2011 “Grayground” — a large-scale graphite, oil, and acrylic painting of horses in the midst of battle — was sold that same year to a phone bidder at Sotheby’s Hong Kong for $1.1 million, the highest auction price recorded for a contemporary southeast Asian painting at the time. Yet the Filipino artist says he was stunned to find out how much some of his older works had appreciated. “A couple of years ago, I was looking for a good drawing that I had done. Most of my drawings are usually covered in paint, but I was looking for a drawing that wasn’t. When I found out the price I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. It was 10 times more than the original gallery price,” he said, his laugh underscoring his mixed emotions at the steep price increase.

The artist has learned his lesson. He says he now keeps one artwork from every solo exhibition. At the rate his pieces are selling, he should. In his latest show, “recyclables,” held at the Singapore Tyler Print institute, 70 percent of the works were sold by the morning of the opening. Ventura’s plan to set up a private museum to present his own works, as well as the collection of Filipino contemporary art he has slowly accumulated, is little more than a hope for the future, “maybe in three to four years’ time.” For now, he remains tight-lipped about the “other” Filipino artists he has been collecting. “I don’t want to make any [other artists] jealous ... but I do buy a lot. There are a lot of good artists in manila,” he quipped while relaxing in the private exhibition room of the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI).

A few hours later, at the show’s opening reception, Ventura appeared in a black t-shirt with a black jacket by Maison Martin Margiela, a label known for its understated approach. But he had paired these simple items with white jeans he had hand-painted with an elaborate, graffiti-like design. The contrasting fashion statement is a reflection of the artist’s personality: behind his quiet, soft-spoken demeanor lurks an edgier side that Ventura lets loose in his artworks.

Ventura loves nothing more than to subvert familiar cartoon figures, such as Mickey Mouse or a dwarf from Snow White, giving them a “new reality” with the help of a skull or a gas mask. The artist has risen to prominence on the Asian contemporary art scene with complex, layered works that juxtapose unexpected images, often rather dark — internal organs with flowers and butterflies, or a clown and a gas mask — always rendered with exquisite draughtsmanship. He is known for mixing different styles, such as hyperrealism and Surrealism, cartoons and graffiti.

By day, Ms. Kopka is a freelance editor/writer/illustrator, and at night, she works in her Perrysburg home making painstaking pencil-on-tissue paper drawings before transferring them onto thick paper and enlivening them with color. In December, 10 of her pieces were featured at the Columbus headquarters of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. This summer, she'll lead all-level classes at Owens Community College.

Botanical illustration depicts the form, color, and details of plants. It was practiced in ancient India, China, and Egypt where images of plants were carved into pharaohs' tombs, says Robin Jess, executive director of the American Society of Botanical Artists in New York.

Botanical art, expected to be beautiful and technically accurate, is riding a wave of popularity, says Ms. Jess, largely among women artists in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Japan, and South Korea. Concern for the environment and a passion for gardening are fueling the trend.

For hundreds of years, the medium was watercolor. These days, graphite, colored pencil, pastels, pen and ink, and oil paints are used.

In David Herzig's living room, water lilies and peachy-gold bearded iris adorn the walls, singing with dramatic colors and larger-than-life size. "It's more about getting you engulfed in a scene," says Mr. Herzig, who paints at his kitchen table, overlooking a small ravine in Monclova Township.

One of his most popular subjects is a four-part sequential unfolding of the majestic amaryllis, a huge bulb with a fast-growing stalk. "I like to say it's like painting a moving target," says Mr. Herzig. He tries to stagger the blooming of 35 amaryllis bulbs for winter painting. His paintings offer more dimension than meets the eye. "I'm trying to depict these things in the round, in a sculptural way."

He studied sculpture and painting at Siena Heights University, but after graduation, gravitated to the watercolors he'd done at Start High School. He owned the Ottawa Gallery in Sylvania from 1988 to 1996, leaving it to paint full time. He did landscapes, and as a homeowner tending to flowers was captivated by plump peonies.

He renders orchids, oriental lilies, cyclamen, and "whatever I find in the garden, whatever I stumble across that catches my fancy. It has to strike me as being graceful and bold."