Felix Catarata to Open His First One-Man Show, ‘Gathered,’ at Vetted

Looking at Felix Catarata’s works, it’s hard to imagine they were painted by someone who is largely self-taught. Though he had no formal art education, Catarata possessed an early passion for drawing and painting, coupled with an instinctive conceptual sensibility which would fuel his drive to pursue art.

Catarata was born 57 years ago in Mandaue City, Cebu. He was around two years old when his parents relocated the family up North to Bogo City. Even then, Catarata already showed his artistic inclinations, drawing on any material that he could get his hands on. But when the time came to choose a college course, his parents gently steered him away from Fine Arts.

“Di kaya ng parents ko,” Catarata said of the family’s financial constraints. Being the second child and eldest son in a family of seven, his parents worried about the uncertainty of pursuing a career in art and the long road to establishing a livelihood from it.

Instead, Catarata became a teacher. While waiting for the board examinations, however, he found himself working at Maitland-Smith, a furniture factory in Cebu. It was a serendipitous detour that would reignite Catarata’s artistic ambitions. 

It was at Maitland-Smith where Catarata first developed an affinity for still life. With Europe a strong market for the company at the time, much of the furniture was hand-painted with floral motifs. The experience planted an early seed that would eventually grow into a sustained preoccupation with the genre.

Though he taught practical arts after that factory stint, painting never completely left him. Catarata continued to teach himself, steadily developing his skills through observation, experimentation, and persistent practice.

Along the way, he found artists whose work resonated deeply with him, particularly American painters Scott Burdick and Daniel Gerhatz. Both artists’ grounding in classical techniques appealed to Catarata, who admired their use of color and the expressiveness of their brushwork.

Those influences can be felt in Catarata’s approach, which is rooted in classical teachings while remaining open to a more instinctive interpretation of the form. His artistic vocabulary, however, is not simply borrowed from the traditions he admires. It is also shaped by where he comes from.

He describes Bogo City as having a distinctly “bukid” character—a rural sensibility that would eventually find its way into his paintings.

In the earlier part of his career, Catarata explored the human condition, particularly through paintings of children. Eventually, he returned to still life, reconnecting with the genre he had first encountered at Maitland-Smith.

Sliced, 20 x 28 inches, acrylic on canvas

This time, though, his works in still life were no longer simply an exercise in Western aesthetics. Catarata wanted to make it his own.

“I want to paint a local version. A Bogo version,” he says.

The result is a body of work that retains the discipline of classical painting while carrying the warmth and informality of his surroundings. Vibrant colors, energetic brushwork and familiar elements give his still lifes a sense of place. Objects are gathered not simply to compose a picture, but to evoke a particular atmosphere—one that feels lived-in rather than staged.

There is also a playful streak in his approach.

“I like to put other elements,” he says, allowing himself the freedom to move beyond the conventions of the genre. He is drawn to arrangements that feel less formal and more spontaneous, loosening the still life from its traditional expectations. 

It is fitting, then, that Gathered, Catarata’s exhibition at Vetted, marks his first solo show in the Philippines.

It is a milestone that has taken years to arrive. For an artist who was once discouraged from formally studying Fine Arts, the journey has become its own education. The factory floor, the classroom, the self-directed hours of practice, the artists he studied from afar and the rural landscape of Bogo. In his show, Catarata brings these threads together. 

The classical discipline and instinct, studied technique and lived experience, the traditions of still life and the everyday character of home – all these emerge in a body of work that is unmistakably his, rooted in the Bogo bukid of his youth, but gathered from a lifetime of looking, learning and painting.