Flowing Free: The Art of Katrina Cuenca

Katrina Cuenca is the painter and sculptor behind those dreamy flower-like figures you may have seen featured in magazines, newspapers, and on social media. Fresh from her hugely successful ‘Tetrachromacy’ show at Galerie Joaquin Rockwell in late January as well as another sold-out exhibit featuring her latest collection of glass sculptures at Art Fair last month entitled ‘Lumina,’ the youthful abstract artist sat down with Esquire Philippines to talk about her journey so far.

Katrina Cuenca

Growing up with art

“Even up to now, it’s still difficult for me to say, ‘I’m an artist.’ There’s still kind of that stigma to it,” she says. Cuenca is the painter and sculptor behind dreamy flower-like figures you might have seen featured in magazines, newspapers, and on social media. Although she has been making art professionally for several years now, she says it feels weird to say it out loud when it doesn’t feel like a job to her. 

“It’s like playing around with whatever ideas come to mind,” she says. “I understand how lucky I am that I get to do this because it doesn’t feel like work at all.”

Cuenca grew up immersed in what would later become her profession. “I was always into art. I loved it even when I wasn’t necessarily good at it,” she recalls of her childhood. Her grandfather was an avid collector of classic, traditional Filipino art. Paintings of local greats such as Cesar Legazpi, Paco Gorospe, and Cesar Buenaventura hung on the walls of their home while a private library had a section dedicated to art books where the young Cuenca used to read about the works of Van Gogh and Picasso.

“My grandfather bought me instructional books on how to paint and draw but I didn’t have the materials. I was limited to crayons,” Cuenca remembers. “It wasn’t until I was much older that I got my hands on oil pastels. I almost flunked art in grade school. I used to watch videos of Bob Ross and he made it look so easy.”

A product of St. Scholastica’s College Manila, which she says is an institution that is very supportive of the arts, Cuenca says the school was able to help nurture and hone her talent from elementary to high school.

“I would always try to copy what the teacher was doing, but you can’t replicate oil painting with crayons. They would ask me what I was trying to do, and I would say that it was supposed to be a mountain, but it didn’t look like one,” she recalls with a laugh. “In high school, I was lucky to be classmates with a bunch of very artistic kids and I developed a new love for drawing and art.”

Cuenca admits that she was not as serious as she should have been when it came to her academics and art provided a welcome reprieve. “They had a lot of these art competitions, and they were usually during math period so I joined. Luckily, I won, and it was a good feeling,” she says. 

Cuenca chose Visual Arts for her elective in junior year of high school and being in that class further made her realize that Fine Arts was what she wanted to pursue in college. “It was something I really wanted to do except my family didn’t want me to. My family owned a restaurant and they wanted me to go into corporate,” she shares. The young student eventually earned a degree in Management of Financial Institutions from De La Salle University-Manila.

“I had subjects like Quantitative Methods of Mathematics, I had to study calculus and statistics but abilidad is what I really learned from school,” she says about her days in Taft. “After college, it was a bit of a turmoil because it was a battle between what was expected of me and what I really wanted, which was to do something creative,” Cuenca recalls. “My first job was in HSBC. I was there for just two days.”

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The Lost Years

Cuenca worked in Accenture for a year doing accounting before finding a job that was a bit more creative at Animation Vertigo, where she did motion capture data editing. “Data that’s shot in the U.S., they send it here and you have to clean it up. We did games for PlayStation like Call of Duty, NBA 2K5 and 2K6 but it was boring because it was just data cleanup,” she explains. “So, I thought of putting up an animation studio.”

Cuenca recruited her officemates to make Filipino cartoons. Some of their memorable work was a 2D animation TVC for Safeguard soap featuring Captain Safeguard, an animated music video for the band Kala, and a cartoon show that a TV network almost picked up. After that, she moved on to a marketing job for an electronics company. During those years of wandering, creating art was the one constant thing Cuenca could turn to. 

“I was still painting at home. Abstract stuff,” she says. Cuenca also taught kids how to paint through her workshops from 2008 to 2013.

On what she describes as a drunken stupor with a few friends, they decided to start a tiny bar/gallery in BGC in 2010 called Limbo. “It wasn’t really a gallery. We had projectors that would show photos of art,” she chuckles. On Sundays, she would invite artists to do live portraiture at the 80 square-meter space and they would invite friends over that introduced Cuenca to more artists in the local scene. It was through these new acquaintances that she was first invited to exhibit her work. OuterSpace Gallery at the now defunct The Collective on Malugay Street in Makati was where the artist sold her work for the very first time. 

All The Universe Will Conspire

In retrospect, that rather impulsive business venture would play a key moment in Cuenca’s pursuit of a career in art.

“That was the year ManilArt started and my friend Jon Sy asked if we could sponsor the event. If we could put up posters, he’d give us tickets and we could come to the vernissage. It was an art fair so that was so cool,” Cuenca fondly recalls. “I remember looking at Obemio’s work, talking about the hands (on a particular painting), and thinking to myself, I really want this.” It proved to be an opportunity for Cuenca to put to good use the abilidad she learned from her La Sallian education.        

“My mom was getting worried about me and what I wanted to do with my life. My mom was always very, very supportive,” she intimates. “Worried but supportive.” The closeness they share is evident with the balance of excitement and tenderness in Cuenca’s voice and how her eyes light up whenever she talks about her mom. To ease her mother’s concerns, Cuenca negotiated with a gallery participating in the fair.

“I begged them. ‘Can you please hang my work in ManilArt this year?’ Just one painting. It was red. Abstract. I took my mom so I could show her. Of course, I didn’t tell her how it got there,” she confesses. “That’s how it started. I really, really wanted this.” It was also during this time when all the universe seemed to conspire. Cuenca’s husband Manny happens to be the nephew of former PCSO and MTRCB Chairman and art connoisseur, the late Manoling Morato. Morato needed someone to manage his collection and since he knew Cuenca was into art, he asked her to quit her day job and work for him instead. 

Copper sculpture, "Peaceful Reflections" 

“We were exposed to the auction houses: Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Salcedo Auctions,” she says. “We were sent to these places for everything like jewelry, furniture, antiques, and masters but he had no contemporary artists. No young ones. That’s where we came up with the idea of organizing an exhibit. I was excited because then I could hang my work. It went really well and because I was organizing exhibits, artists would also invite me to the exhibits that they would organize. I also met the galleries. Art pulled me in.” 

Finding Her Sabel

In late 2017, Cuenca was invited by known patron of the arts and Secret Fresh Gallery owner Big Boy Cheng to do her first solo exhibit in December the following year.

“I wept. I asked him, ‘Are you sure? Why? Why me?’ He gave me this huge opportunity and he sold out the show,” she shares. At the time, her art was very different from what we see today. 

“2016 to 2018 was very young and colorful and happy. Whales with wings, birds with unicorn horns, and geometric patterns in the background. Fun, crazy, very pop or surrealist art,” she says. For someone who sees her art as a reflection of what one is going through and a genuine expression of what one feels and wants to say, unfortunate news came while Cuenca was busy preparing for her Secret Fresh exhibit that would change her life and ultimately alter her art.

"Pink Horizon," oil and pinkleaf on canvas

“Around April, we found out my mom had cancer and it was so quick. We lost her in August,” she confides. “She was only 56. She was very, very young. She had me when she was only 22 so my idea was we would be the mother and daughter that would grow old together and she would see my son grow up. They were very close.” 

Coping with the reality of losing her mom and having to create the kind of art everyone expected from her must have been confusing. “I had a very difficult time finishing my work for that exhibit because parang the art was too happy and I didn’t take that loss very well,” she recalls of that dark time in her life. She did not feel like she was being honest with her art and there was a disconnect with her grieving.

“My life was in shambles. I didn’t know how to live without my mom. One day, I decided that I would paint how I wanted to feel. That’s when the flowy, quiet, tranquil figures started. My mom loved betta fish. Watching the fish was one of the last bonding moments she had with my son,” Cuenca reveals. “My references were the fish tails in the tank. When you look at it, they’re very light and very peaceful.”

As iconic as, dare we say, Bencab’s muse Sabel is to the National Artist’s body of work, Cuenca seems to have found hers in the distinct abstract style she has been known for since. It also, more importantly, helped her heal. 

Cuenca working on a copper sculpture

“That’s always an escape,” she explains “When I’m painting those figures, it’s very repetitive and there are lines and you get lost in them. There’s a dance to it. It’s therapeutic and it helped me, not to get over it, but to learn to process and deal with things in a better way. I was surprised that that’s what people really gravitated towards.” Her newfound style made its debut in Cuenca’s first exhibit with Galerie Joaquin in 2019. “It’s how genuinely you want to say something. There’s something you want to convey. There’s something you want to speak of. That’s what led me to it.”

Behind the Scenes

I’ve wondered for a while now how a work of Cuenca’s comes to fruition. Every piece always looks so serene but what goes on behind the making of each one?

“Most of my paintings are done between 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. because that’s when it’s quiet and my phone doesn’t distract me,” she explains. It’s never really silent, though. Music plays a big part in her process and Cuenca’s selection is pretty interesting. 

“I listen to a lot of my mom’s music,” she shares of her very eclectic playlist. “Slenderbodies always gets me in the zone to paint. Dave Matthews is another one. There was a time when Crimson and Clover (by Tommy James and The Shondells) was on repeat. On the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, you have The Chemical Brothers and Jeff Buckley there. “Lotus Flower” by Radiohead was also on repeat and I named a lot of my paintings after that song." 

Light is also another important ingredient to the magic she creates. Especially with gold leaf, which she uses quite a bit in her works, looking at a Cuenca depending on when, how, and even what you’re feeling at a particular moment changes how you take it in.

“I consider light to be an external medium for my work. My paintings, at different times of the day, look different. Even at night. I use light absorbing black pigment in some. It looks different in low or bright light. It’s the same with my sculptures, that’s why I use color-shifting pigments,” Cuenca explains. “I don’t want it to be boring. I don’t want you to experience it once, you’ve experienced it how you’re supposed to, and you’re done with it. I want it to be a different experience when you look at it every time.”

At the Moment

Cuenca is currently in the middle of another solo exhibit, this time at Kate Contemporary Madrid in Spain, which runs from late March until mid-April. It’s an interesting time for Cuenca, who’s busy bringing her signature art to life through various media. Following the success of her paintings, she has also interpreted her well-loved abstract figures into copper sculptures.

“I’m pushing the limits to it. Playing around with what other colors I can use and exploring what else I can make with this,” she says. Cuenca has stated that these metal sculptures would be her focus this year as well as her latest foray into glass, which has proven to be not only costly but quite a bit risky as well.

"The Glow of Petals," oil and goldleaf on canvas

“It’s difficult and it’s dangerous,” she shares. “You get glass shards flying all over the place but that’s how it is.” She was also delving into a space synonymous locally with National Artist Ramon Orlina.

“Orlina is the master glass sculptor. I have so much respect for him,” Cuenca says about being compared to the legendary artist widely known for his mostly green glass masterpieces. “Honestly, as much as I wanted to avoid that color, that’s the raw color of glass.” It was another one of her leaps of faith that eventually paid off as fans of her work seem to love seeing her familiar abstract figures in this new medium.

“I really wanted something translucent because the figures in my paintings are underwater. I had this idea that I wanted the figures to look like they’re water suspended in time,” Cuenca illustrates. “With the glass, the intention is to bring my paintings into a more tactile medium and have light that will refract. For some reason, glass captures light and keeps it in. Even when it’s dark, you’ll see it glisten. I love that so much.”

Creating wonderful new art with a medium she is just beginning to master is something that Cuenca relishes. It’s even more fun listening to her talk about all the possibilities she can play around with as she revels in the newness. 

“It’s the exact same feeling as when I first started using gold leaf. I didn’t know what to do and I had no idea what to do with it,” she says. “I’m very excited and I’m relieved that I was even able to make one. I’m having a lot of fun because I know that’s not where it ends.” Painting, on the other hand, will always be her first love. “I still love it so much because that’s the only time that I can really be alone so when I need my peace and quiet, it’s always the paintings that I come back to. When I have a bad day, it’s there. I can’t do any sculptures on a bad day,” she reveals. Cuenca blocks off Monday evenings to work on her paintings. “You can tell mainit yung ulo ko when I don’t get to paint and it’s always whatever I’m going through, that’s what I put into my art.” 

Glass sculpture by Cuenca from Lumina exhibit at Art Fair Ph 2025

Beyond the Easel

Listening to her share so much of herself over a bottle of wine on a lazy Sunday afternoon, it’s clear how much she loves what she does but Cuenca is evidently equally as passionate at being a devoted wife to Manny and mother to her 10-year-old son. Manolo is into football, has an adorable fascination with food, and unsurprisingly takes after his mom when given a 3D pen to doodle with.

“The rest of the time, I’m always with my family. That’s one of the perks of being an artist. The only time we’re not together is when Manolo’s in school,” Cuenca shares. “We’re always together and that’s one of the most precious things that I love.” Cuenca understands how lucky she is to call this her job. Making people feel something with what she creates is what she does for a living. “The best message I’ve received from somebody who appreciates my art is someone asking for permission to screenshot my Instagram so they can turn it into their phone’s wallpaper because they want to see it all the time,” she shares. “I cried. That was really nice.” Cuenca hopes to continue doing crazy, beautiful things as an abstract artist until she can.

“In 40 years, I hope there isn’t any bad life experience that would change my art drastically. At the end of the day, I’m honest about what I want to depict,” she says. “I’m very intention-based with my art. I won’t be able to explain what each painting means but the intention is to make you feel something.”