About Me

Arlene Villaver is a graduate of Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Philippines. She has been painting for 41 years.

As a Christian artist, she considers art a tool for serving the Lord. 

Just as a carpenter has many tools in his toolbox, she believes everyone has different skills and abilities stored in oneself. One of these skills for her is art.

Her dream is to set up a creative art center where she can teach artistic therapy for seniors, art outreaches for the youth, and even for women and children.

         May her works bring encouragement to the viewers, especially to children.

Arlene Villaver found interest in drawing before she went to school. Fascinated with drawing faces of princesses, stick figures, castles, and houses, doing it on roads using sticks or broken pots or white stones, and pencils on scratch papers, this then further developed into a passion for drawing faces of her family, classmates, and teachers while listening to her teachers. The influence of her mother’s guidance and modeling of respect for people indeed has extensively found expression in her art. When she came to encounter Jesus Christ through the Bible, which she learned is the most profound expression of God’s love for mankind, her art became a platform as to how God thinks, feels, and sees people.

Her love for the Lord and His word became the center of her life. She then realized that art is just one of the tools of expressing her faith in Christ which releases her from her obsession to art as it is written in John 8:32, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

From a studio-bound artist to one engaging with people, her works and exhibits are born out of her interactions with people. Volunteerism during calamities gave her opportunities to interact with people in poor urban communities and in far-flung places, using different kinds of transportation or on foot walking in the mountains for hours to the Tingguian and the Aeta tribes. These were precious times of knowing more of the beauty of the Filipinos – the warmth, hospitality, meekness, resiliency, bayanihan spirit, and creativity. While sketching them, it became open doors for friendships and sharing the love of Jesus and His word. Partnerships with non-government organizations and churches made most of these interactions possible.

Her other ‘tools’ in serving God would take place in between her art, thus her exhibits are interspersed. Adopting a child in 2000 was God’s call she responded. For almost seven years now, she resettled to her birthplace in Cebu City, moving out from Manila, where she practiced her art for 23 years, to respond to God’s call to minister to her aging parents. Seemingly slowing down her art production, but challenging experiences, people, and learning to wait for God’s timing brought about further transformation that deepened her faith and her intimacy with God and enriched the reservoir of her creativity. 

For Arlene Villaver, art belongs to God entrusted to man, and it is a powerful tool to bring glory to God and to draw people to Him. As she is picking up this ‘tool’, a solo exhibit is now in the offing titled ‘Who Am I?’ This is an art exhibition and a platform in 2015 to express God’s heart, perspective, and plans for children as revealed in the Scriptures, and man's abuses, neglect, exploitation, and violence against them. To God be the glory!