All posts tagged: Filipino Artists

artwork - lee cundangan 2

The Smudges Stay: Lee Cundañgan’s Hand-Painted Christmas Cards, Imperfections Included

Look closely inside some of Lee Cundañgan’s Christmas cards and you’ll spot faint smudges, the kind a print shop would wipe away before anything ships. She won’t clean them. “I refuse,” she says. To her, those marks show that a real person painted the card by hand, with paint that didn’t always go where she wanted it to. That stubbornness runs through every card in the five-design sets she’s selling this Christmas. So does a more pressing reason for selling them this year. Four Cards That Weren’t Supposed to Be a Business Cundañgan calls herself an artist, storyteller, and educator, and a “professional raketera,” Filipino slang for someone who juggles several gigs at once. Painting is one of them. Last Christmas, when she was just starting out as a painter, she made four cards for fun and didn’t think much of them. Then the compliments started coming in, a lot of them. Two close friends told her the cards deserved a proper run the following year. This year, she listened. Five Designs, Each One Built …