Walking barefoot is a sensation associated with freedom and liberation. An act that is easily taken for granted. Dan Macapugay’s Barefoot highlights this very freedom.
Being barefoot on the ground is rooted in the personal experience of the artist. He looks back at when he worked on his family farm before entirely focusing on his artistic career.
The artist brings up the sensation of going barefoot for the first time. As precautious beings, we are fully aware that we could get hurt by the elements on the ground, yet we do so anyway. This is a similar leap that he associates with the process of embracing the challenges of realizing this series.”Barefoot” focuses on female subjects dressed in white flowing dresses set against verdant land. The imagery used by the artist evokes the idea of freeness and a sense of grounding, hinting at a desire to foster deeper connections with nature.
The artist cites his influences such as John Singer Sargent, Nick Alm, and Fernando Amorsolo, male artists who often depict female bodies in their respective practices.
Macapugay’s goal with his medium is to express a variety of emotions using watercolor. The artist’s challenge in Barefoot is in illustrating hands and feet and working with green color palettes that rarely appear in his body of work. He leans into his mastery of watercolor, allowing familiarity in adding depth and transparency to his images. This is how the artists connect this new series to his practice.
The collection can be viewed as a step towards the artist expanding his portfolio beyond the portraits which he prolifically shares on his Instagram page. In that sense, Barefoot liberates the artist from his own anxieties in working with unfamiliar elements fundamentally freeing him from being boxed in one art style.
Notes by Marz Aglipay