JUXTAPOSITION and vagueness, along with material/tool self-consciousness, were some of de Veyra’s earliest obsessions towards creating a finished product. In this piece, for instance, the horizontal drawing space becomes an emotional theater stage that doesn’t simply mimic a theatrical setup in the realist mode; instead, what is offered is the juxtaposition act to arrive at a dramatic-cum-contextual jigsaw.
    That act may be old hat already, but de Veyra was trying to bring back that “old thing” in order to haul in this blue woman’s (Donita Rose’s?) face as a symbol of TV glamour, but to be surrounded by several emblems that would push the whole thing back to experimental-theater mode. So what is being dramatized by This Stage’s Blues?

    There’s a theater stage with a tear in the background (a fictional tear and a real one—a contrived paper bruise); below the stage is an ink blur (pen hatching’s rain?) over seeming rocks, over or under which is an ice cream cone ghost with a drip (dripping ink, get it?); all of these to frustrate a supposed symbolism with interfering references to materiality.
    Then, below all this, in graphite and wax crayon touches and then in ink: the golden brown grass seen in Sa Palikurang Nipa alongside a framed picture, two fruits, and a star with feet with boots. The framed picture is now suddenly that of a Greek portico instead of a nipa hut. All of which may challenge symbolic significance while asking whether this image would appear better using graphite or ink.
    In the seeming narrative could be gleaned (if one can): heartache (corny and not), sweetness, pop-ness, down-to-earth-ness (the grass and fruits and vegetables), pretense (emulations of ancient European empires), ambition, sex (or sexiness), and TV-blueness. This is drawing qua the planning of contrivances, as for a drama or film poster, but not necessarily devoid of a mood that is usually the result of crazed juxtaposition, this one being still somehow theatrical in shape.