Ramona Dela Cruz-Gaston's "Deadly Sins"

Ramona Dela Cruz takes on a few deadly sins 

Capital vices: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth are rendered with vivid detail on canvas. Ramona Dela Cruz shares her exploration into a heinous topic, "Deadly Sins." Despite the gritty nature of the subject Dela Cruz interprets her subject with a matter-of-fact approach. Dela Cruz had thoroughly immersed herself in research in order to gain a deeper perspective into each of the seven capital sins through mood music and watching documentaries placing her in the shoes of people who have committed sins. 

Being in a trance-like state has helped her channel ideas fluidly onto her canvas. Influenced by her previous collaboration with Froilan Calayag, Dela Cruz incorporates the use of graphite on canvas which she finds technically challenging. Dela Cruz adapted this process in order to push herself beyond her comfort as she works on a subject that she has long planned to paint on canvas. 

This immersion into the subject led her to spontaneously compose the elements in each of her works. Her culminating piece which ties all the sins together, titled "Deadly sins," captures that spontaneity in drawing elements. Unlike her repeating patternesque compositions which we see in her previous works, this piece shows that Dela Cruz is capable of flexing her skill in painting a full non-repeating composition. 

The entire collection of "Deadly sins" makes use of orange tints for its overall look, alluding to either the fires of hell or the color of human flesh. Whichever way one looks at the work, Dela Cruz rendered illustrations using graphite that appear like scars on flesh. In each piece, the apple is the focal element on the canvas, a reminder of the ancestral sin that was borne by Eve offering Adam the forbidden fruit.