Amuma ni Mama- An Art Exhibit Celebrating the National Breastfeeding Awareness Month

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National Breastfeeding Awareness Month, celebrated every August in the Philippines under Republic Act No. 10028, serves as a critical campaign to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding. This month-long observance highlights breastfeeding not merely as a personal choice, but as a fundamental public health intervention. By aligning with global movements like World Breastfeeding Week, the initiative emphasizes that collective societal support is essential for safeguarding the health of both mothers and infants during the crucial first 1,000 days of life.
The benefits of breastfeeding form the foundation of a child's lifelong health and development. Breast milk is uniquely structured to provide optimal nutrition, delivering the perfect balance of vitamins, proteins, and fats. Critically, it contains colostrum—the "first milk" rich in antibodies—which acts as a baby's first natural vaccine. Clinical evidence demonstrates that exclusively breastfed infants face significantly lower risks of respiratory infections, severe diarrhea, and chronic conditions like childhood obesity. For mothers, breastfeeding stimulates postpartum recovery, lowers the risk of breast and ovarian cancers, and creates an enduring psychological bond with their child.
In these 3 paintings my Master artist Celso Pepito some techniques used includes:

Mixed media art refers to any visual artwork that combines two or more distinct mediums or materials into a single cohesive creation. Unlike traditional art forms—such as oil painting or marble sculpting, which rely strictly on a single material—mixed media actively shatters these rigid boundaries. By blending contrasting elements like acrylic paint, vintage photographs, textiles, and everyday found objects, mixed media frees artists from historical constraints. It transforms the artistic canvas into an open, multidimensional space where anything can become art.

Impasto is a technique used in painting where paint is laid on thickly to give a painting texture and an almost 3D effect. It can be accomplished with mediums such as acrylic, oil, or gouache. Early in painting, it was thought that the image being captured was more important than the medium it was painted with. Attention was drawn to the subject instead of the paint and canvas itself.

The first notable artist to start painting with the Impasto technique was Rembrandt. In one of his self portraits from 1659. Thicker brush strokes are clearly visible across his face to give himself a weathered look.

Here are examples of Celso Pepito's impasto and mixed media paintings from Amuma ni Mama, an Art Exhibit in SM City Cebu.  The show's works capture the bond of a mother and her child by standing on art making's principles of compositional balance and by showing what can be in working through the ins and out of creative explorations and personal creative distillations.

Amuma ni Mama is presented to promote the National Breastfeeding Awareness Month.

 

Amuma ni Mama 3, 40" x 24", Mixed Media, 2022, Private Collection

 

Amuma ni Mama 2, 40" x 24" Mixed Media, 2022, Private Collection
 
 

Amuma ni Mama 1, Mixed Media, Private Collection




 

Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice. (Proverbs 23:2)

From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise you. (Psalm 71:6)

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