Tony Meer Paints His Loves
Also published by American Chronicle in a slightly different version.
He is my beloved kind of hero. He is my Caped Crusader – he is a lawyer who fights for unpopular causes; he is my Superman – he has a lingering health problem yet stands out as he continues to fight for the Filipino soldier. He sits still on his wheelchair while his mind prowls the past and the present, looking for opportunities to serve his people.
Tony Meer is 83 going on 84; I’m counting, he is not. Yesterday, September 6, I didn’t really count but there may have been 83 paintings from his brilliant mind and gifted hands in his one-man art exhibit at the Manila Polo Club, Forbes Park. Tony Meer is Lawyer, Soldier, Painter, Spy.
You knew Tony Meer is an alumnus of the University of the Philippines (UP), but you didn’t know he was a spy? That means you haven’t read his autobiography, a massive tome, A Lawyer’s Fate & Faith (2003), all of 499 pages, each page 9×9 inches. He was a soldier-spy in World War II. He was one of those who helped liberate the campus of the UP College of Agriculture in the last war.
You didn’t know that Tony Meer was a painter? Neither did I, never mind that he did share with us (Dr Tony O, his wife Bella and I) his penthouse and karaoke December 15 last year, 2 days after celebrating his 83rd birthday. I asked questions and we sang songs along with him with his karaoke and sing-along mike. Who wouldn’t be happy and open celebrating an 83rd birthday? A creative mind is a happy soul.
Yesterday at Tony Meer’s one-man art exhibit, it was love at first sight for me. I fell in love with Tony’s girl the moment I saw her. The image you see is a detail of my favorite Tony Meer painting, unsigned and undated – it belongs to the future. It is a painting not by the hand but by the heart. She sits still and she moves me; she looks the other way and she has my attention. She is young and I am young at heart.
While not a Michelangelo or Leonardo, the one who sired her, Tony Meer, is a painter unlike any other. Let me count the ways:
(1) He paints in oils.
(2) He paints in music.
(3) He has painted in blood.
(4) He has painted in jurisprudence.
(5) He continues to paint in words.
(1) He paints in oils.
His one-man show of paintings yesterday was for raising funds for his foundation Handog sa Sundalo (Gift to the Soldier). (A good number bought paintings, he reports today.) I will describe the Tony Meer collection of paintings as one of portraits: visual renderings of men, women, children – and horses. The painting of a horse I liked he has titled ‘Macedonian’ and was featured on the face of the RSVP invitation card. About 20 were portraits of women. Tony Meer probably loved them all; I love a few. One of them has her eyes blocked out in colors; she is someone who is here and is not here. There are portraits of several men, at least 12 of them. The one I like I shall call the White Man: white hair, white beard & moustache, white teeth showing – his smile warms my heart.
(2) He paints in music.
At the one-man show, Tony Meer yesterday read and sang songs he wrote and composed himself, dedicated to his many loves, ‘the people who made my life worthwhile.’ The many women in the artist’s life – falling in love was music to Tony’s ears.
(3) He has painted in blood.
When World War II came to the Philippines 1941 December 8, he enlisted in the Philippine Army under General Douglas MacArthur. He became a machine-gun expert; he became a smart intelligence officer. Among others, he saved the Carlos P Romulo family from the enemy butchers. The Japanese hunted him. When they couldn’t catch him, they tortured his sister-in-law’s family; they burned the family house in San Pablo City; they massacred men, women and children of the city; they threw babies into the air and caught each at the point of a bayonet. Barbarians! The blood flowed; the mural was oppressive, suffocating.
(4) He has painted in jurisprudence.
Tony Meer, UP College of Law, is the one who discovered the contract lease between the Sultan of Sulu and the British North Borneo Company, proving that the Sultan in truth and in fact owned Sabah. He is the one who first assailed ‘the right of a government official to destroy the property rights of a taxpayer by methods not conferred upon him by the law involved, or in excess of the authority granted him under the law.’ He is the one who found in the Tariff and Customs Code a provision for allowing the entry of imported parts of a final product free of customs duties and taxes, and with that, the Philippines became the biggest pineapple country in the world.
(5) He continues to paint in words.
Aside from that coffee-table book I already told you about that which much of the information I know comes from (my copy obtained through a common friend, Dr O), I have a copy of his new book Carry On! subtitled The General Miguel Malvar Family (102 pages). Miguel Malvar was the last General to surrender to the American imperialists. Tony Meer’s mother was a Malvar, a daughter of the General. Tony Meer, grandson of a hero, is going to be the last hero to surrender to the hegemony of the mass media, or the machinations of those who use the mass media to build and maintain their empires. He continues to publish himself, even paying for space in the media, to denounce hosts of television talk shows who are ‘vultures of morals, who smile with glee when some other persons are suffering from the publication and exposure.’
I don’t know about you, but I’m sure Tony Meer loves his country very much.
Copyright 2007 September 07 by Frank A Hilario.
[...] in his first one-man show at the Manila Polo Club last year; I was invited by him. See also my ‘Young At Heart. Tony Meer Paints His Loves,’ [...]