Strength On and Off the Canvas: The Art of Lydia Velasco
Lydia Velasco is one of the most prolific artists working today. Her work highlights the timeless beauty of women, made all the more impactful by an artist whose life shows the timeless and universal beauty of strength.
Words Mara Fabella
Photos courtesy of Jovel Lorenzo
June 02, 2026
The strength of a woman is unmatched. If there’s anything we can gather from Women’s Month, feminist movements, and the continuous fight for gender equality, it’s that strength for women is, for better or worse, multi-faceted. The strength of women is molded into different shapes and forms by the different situations in life that call her to be strong in a multitude of contrasting ways. Take the woman painter. She must be strong and unrelenting in a male-dominant field, but project beauty through a lens a man never could. Female artists are an embodiment of this intricate, yet fierce strength. Their art is a thing of beauty, brought to life by hands that never gave up.
Lydia Velasco is a striking symbol of this strength. Velasco is one of the most prominent figures in Philippine art and a pioneer for Filipina painters. Her career spans decades of work, visualizing and embodying the beauty of the Filipino woman. As she was developing her identity as an artist, she was able to call the likes of Mauro Malang Santos, Cesar Legaspi, and H.R. Ocampo peers and mentors, whose wisdom helped her learn how to master such a keen painter’s eye. In the end, it was Velasco’s own fierce tenacity that made her the vibrant force in Philippine art that she is.
“As a woman, kailangan you are strong,”the artist says. For many women today, strength takes on a more fluid and adaptive nature. During Velasco’s time, strength was a survival mechanism. Being a breadwinner and a woman in a low-income family, striving to be recognized in predominantly male fields, Velasco had to fight tooth and nail to provide a life for her family and one for herself as an artist. Her paintings bring her resolute and delicate femininity to life. Velasco paints women, specifically Filipina women. Women larger than life. Women who are modest. Women who are sexual. Women who are mothers. Women who are workers. Women who are free. These are the women of Lydia Velasco’s art, and they are a manifestation of her own dynamic and soulful life.
Photo by Jovel Lorenzo
Utopia, 72 x 84 inches, oil on canvas.
Self-Portrait: Lydia Velasco, 48 x 36 inches, oil on canvas.
Divina Gracia, 30 x 24 inches, oil on canvas; Under the Golden Light, 30 x 24 inches, oil on canvas
