Faith in God helps artist fight cancer
At the age of three, Muffet Dolar showed her potential as an artist when she had her maiden painting in a water color and sold it for five centavos to her playmate.
That was 57 summers ago. Today, Mrs. Muffet Dolar Villegas is a well-known artist who has sold over 500 of her famous paintings here and abroad.
But a few years back she was afflicted with breast cancer and many thought it was the end of her career as an artist.
However, Mrs. Villegas is a strong-willed woman whose equally strong faith in God gave her the strength and stamina to lick the “Big C” after a successful chemotherapy.
During her ordeal in the fight against cancer, she bombarded Heaven with prayers day in and day out.
Her prayers of supplication were not in vain. A miracle happened. She was cured of breast cancer.
Indeed, God heard her prayers.
Today, Mrs. Villegas has fully recovered, including a fresh growth of hair on her head when she was bald at the height of fighting the “Big C.”
She is back in shape not only in her artistic paintings but branched out to another God-given talent as a writer and columnist of the Sunday Negros Chronicle, a weekly community paper, published and edited by veteran journalist Ely P. Dejaresco.
In her column “A Journey Through Cancer”, Mrs. Villegas said: “Instead of counting sheep to sleep, I always choose a riotous journey through colors until dawn. My watercolors and acrylics loaded on brushes come to life in fluid motion while others are sleeping.”
“Art can defy time and space. A work of art is a time capsule that embodies both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of the artist. What goes on in the mind and heart flows through every stroke, influenced by outside forces like gardens, air, waves, the sand and the stars. The desire to create springs from reasons hard to define, and motive to create drives the passion even harder,” she said.
“During and after cancer, colors were more vivid than before. I think God gave us second chances in life to have new eyes and a new heart,” Mrs. Villegas said.
“It was my mother who taught and encouraged me to paint when I was a child,” she said.
From time to time, Mrs. Villegas put out exhibits of her paintings not only here in Dumaguete City but also in Metro Manila where buyers are mostly foreigners.
