A painting by a Bacoleña based in the Netherlands is on exhibit at The Mauritshuis, The Hague’s leading museum which is home to the finest works of Johannes Vermeer, one of Netherlands’ painters of the 17th century, and Rembrandt van Rijn, the most famous painter of the Golden Age.
Glensie Hombrebueno of Barangay Sum-ag, Bacolod, submitted an entry along with 3,427 artists, both amateur and professionals, to an open call of The Mauritshuis to creative makers all over the world to unleash their imagination, reinterpret and make their own rendition of the Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, the Philippine Embassy in the Netherlands announced on Sunday, April 30.
Hombrebueno’s “Babaeng nakaperlas” is a portrait in watercolor of a Filipina with a pearl earring and in mustard-colored clothing. The Philippines, also known as “Pearl of the Orient Seas,” inspired the artist to bring this painting to fruition, it said.
“I’m a self-taught painter, although my father did teach me a lot of the basics in sketching portraits. He is very good in charcoal but I wanted my art to have color so I experimented in trying out different kinds of media. Watercolor fascinated me the most, being the hardest one to control,” Hombrebueno told DIGICAST NEGROS.
Hombrebueno, 32, is a 2013 Bachelor of Science in Materials Engineering graduate from the University of Saint La Salle in Bacolod.
She worked in Dubai from 2014 and moved to the Netherlands in 2019, where she works as an engineer.
Her painting started as a hobby, she said “then it developed into something more when friends started asking for commissioned works”.
“I really enjoy painting portraits of animals and people, anything with eyes. But lately I’ve been drawn to flowers and plants, too,” she said.*