Sacred Wisdom: Recent Paintings by El Dosado

By Martin Genodepa

Wisdom does not inherently belong to the sacred. It may arise from the practical and perceived in an understanding of human behavior, an accumulation of lived experience, a sharpened sense of judgment. It becomes sacred only when it exceeds utility: when it turns toward deeper apprehensions of existence, toward questions of meaning, or toward what may be understood as spiritual truth.

In his eighth solo exhibition, El Dosado (b. 1973) revisits Christian narratives drawn from Scripture and the lives of saints, reanimating them as vehicles for contemporary reflection. These are not mere retellings. Allegory is his primary vehicle allowing him to distill from these sources a series of reflections on moral and spiritual insight. The paintings present an articulation of what he understands as hard-won, sacred wisdom.

Yet Dosado’s project does not remain within the bounds of orthodox Christianity. His works deliberately weave in Filipino folk beliefs and cultural memory, producing a syncretic visual language that recalls, in spirit, the integrative philosophy of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. Here, belief systems do not simply coexist; they are made to speak through one another.

The titles of the works are essential interpretive guides, serving as points of access into the meanings Dosado constructs from both Biblical and folk sources. Among them are Your Hearts Are Pure, Saint John; The Courage of Innocents, Saint Michael vs. the Dragon; The Divine Journey; The Birth of Our Saviour Brings Goodwill to Men and Nature; The Beacon of Wisdom; The Sacred Voice of My Heart Whispers Love and Hope; Guided by Divine Strength, I Protect My Empathy; and The Mystery of Golgotha. Together, they frame the exhibition as a meditation on faith, morality, and the opportunity of spiritual unity across traditions.

These paintings that most clearly express Dosado’s syncretic approach consistently feature two young male travelers. Reappearing across the series, they function as a leitmotif and as the implied recipients of the sacred messages. Their presence subtly recalls José Rizal’s enduring proposition of the youth as the hope of the nation, recast here as a spiritual idea.

These works often follow a deliberate, almost formulaic composition that reinforces their message. The youthful figures occupy the foreground, while a larger, sweeping narrative unfolds in the background, visions that suggest moments of divine encounter. This structure closely echoes the transformative episode of Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus, a subject famously interpreted by artists such as Peter Paul Rubens and Ludovico Carracci. In Dosado’s hands, the encounter with wisdom remains dramatic, even as it is divinely delivered. However, his young travelers are not struck down; they remain standing and receptive.

Unlike more traditional forms of syncretism, where meanings tend toward stability, Dosado’s works resist a singular, closed interpretation. The fusion of syncretism and allegory complicates rather than resolves meaning. The artist’s intent may incline toward clarity, yet the very structure of his visual language, where multiple belief systems intersect, produces a field of layered significance. This is not contradiction, but a recognition that what is presented as singular wisdom may in fact be composed of many converging truths.

Dosado’s engagement with syncretism situates him within a broader lineage of artists who have drawn from multiple cultural and symbolic systems to articulate complex identities. Iranian Shirin Neshat, Mexican Frida Kahlo, and Cuban Wifredo Lam each mobilized hybrid visual languages that combine, respectively, Islamic iconography and Persian calligraphy, folk and Catholic imagery with pre-Columbian symbolism, and Afro-Caribbean spiritual forms with Cubist and organic vocabularies in order to interrogate identity, history, and structures of power. In their practices, syncretism operates as critique that exposes the contradictions and fractures within social and cultural conditions.

Dosado’s visual syncretism departs from a critical stance. Instead, his work is grounded in a traditional mode of figuration that recalls the style of Fernando Amorsolo or Ireneo Miranda. Unlike the more expressionistic tendencies of the foreign artists mentioned earlier, Dosado renders his figures with clarity and compositional order.

This formal approach supports and emphasizes reconciliation of diverse systems of belief within a single, coherent vision. In his paintings, the human figures become vessels of balance, where physical and spiritual dimensions are in quiet alignment, and where body and soul are imagined in a state of blissful harmony.

Two paintings are conceptual anchors for Dosado’s current exhibition. I Have Seen Tales and Fables unveils the artist’s interior journey that has shaped his path toward his present state of spiritual awareness. In the Silence of Their Journey, They Carry the Healing Light declares Dosado’s visualization of humanism and idealism that may verge on the pollyannaish.

In this collection of recent acrylic paintings, the artist articulates a deeply personal philosophy, weaving together strands of indigenous tradition and Christian thought making possible the convergence of inherited memory and spiritual tradition. Through his command of figuration, El Dosado captures the interplay between the earthly and the unearthly.

Taken together, these paintings read as a confession signifying that the artist’s humanity has been tempered and deepened through this confluence of spiritual traditions.

Sacred Wisdom, the 8^th solo exhibition of paintings by El Dosado, is on view at 9:04 Resto Café Events in Poblacion, Jibaoan, Pavia until June 30, 2026.