Karen Sioson, leading watercolorist, is holding her first solo exhibition at Ricco Renzo Galleries until today, Oct. 27.

Sioson has been painting since the ’90s and began to devote her full time to it in 2010.

An interior design graduate of the University of the Philippines, she became fascinated with watercolor during her studies.

She returned to her hometown in Bataan after graduation and continued to paint, with her garden colors as her palette.

She has exhibited with other artists since 2012, in Hong Kong, Bali, New Delhi, Shaanxi, Belgrade, Budapest and Mexico, among other places.

 

Sioson enjoys her own Garden of Eden with masterful renderings of a tropical garden. She handles a most difficult medium with deft and brevity. The impressionist realism of her works makes each flower, fruit and foliage almost palpable in the ethereal light it finds itself in. Her works display a mastery of detail, and are testaments to her love of nature and her passion for gardening.

A single red hibiscus, “Bathed in Light,” shines in its simplicity. The color composition is one she pulls off with aplomb. The shadows are bent in light and color, in soft hues of blue and lavender.

The cotton fruit branch or “Santol” has a full texture and light appeal. It is almost ready for the picking.

Bougainvillea is a favorite subject, its petals and leaves seeming ready to fall out of the paper.

The meticulous detail of each artwork speaks of her love of nature and conscientious character as an artist.

Guests of honor were Evangeline Cheng, head of the Ikebana International Manila Chapter, and Real Living Online Magazine editor Rachelle Medina, with Hungary Ambassador Jozsef Bencze and his wife, and finance director Istvan Szigeti. Other attendees were family, close friends and members of the International Watercolor Society of the Philippines, of which she is also a founder and member. —CONTRIBUTED