Volume 7, Issue No. 11
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . . .
Our latest as of Friday, August 29, 2025
~ They're the late bloomers of the baby boomer generation. Rather than wither in their homes worrying about the setting sun in their lives, artist Frank Cruzet is giving them the impetus to escape boredom. Brush, canvas, paint, and water colour are his tools to wean them away from morbid thoughts. And by far, he succeeds in getting several dozens of our folks to engage in creative thinking and paint. Remember what Vincent Van Gogh said: "The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting."
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FRANK CRUZET'S SENIORS ART PROGRAM
Creativity Helps Delay Advancing Years
Painting Enriches Life and Improves Outlook
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.” ―
TORONTO - A bit of a stretch it may sound, but Frank Cruzet, the cop-turned-artist, capitalizes on his past experience physically arresting wrongdoers; this time, however, he's arresting a mind condition that affects folks in their sunset years.
"Therapeutic" he calls his inexpensive weekly outreach to divert boredom into creativity by challenging boomers - those born in 1946 through 1964, so called because of a spike in births after the Second World War.
Frank himself is a self-taught painter who conquered the art world, particularly in Toronto, with his oil, acrylic, and watercolor paintings that had been exhibited outside Canada and displayed in art shows by the Philippine Artists Group where he is a member.
Some works have garnered awards like the 20x24 Victoria Park Harbour painting which bested 32 artists and won first prize in the Belleville Plein Air Competition conducted by the Quinte Art Council in 2022.
Frank holds court at Filipino Centre Toronto (FCT) in Scarborough every Wednesday teaching dozens of his protégés (he calls them students) the basics of painting, styles, techniques, and mixing colours.
He sighs a feeling of accomplishment and pride that none of his students - 70 at the latest count - shows any signs of Alzheimer's, a common form of dementia.
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"All of them are very active," he says. "And when they go home, they feel pleased and thankful for spending a satisfying day doing their art," he adds.
Canada's Alzheimer Society, however, explained that "The idea that dementia is an 'old person's disease' is not just stigmatizing, it's also a myth." It added that "age-associated memory impairment is part of the natural process of aging."
Frank says the art session being undertaken by the Seniors Art Program he founded with FCT is purely voluntary. "We don't have salary, it's all voluntary here. We also have free meals, free snacks, free everything from donors."
Membership in the program has grown from 12 to 70, according to Frank who invited this reporter on Wednesday, Aug. 27, to see how his proteges fare in painting.
He calls on everyone to join, especially seniors, if only to get out of their homes, to forget their worries, and make themselves busy by harnessing their inherent talents.
Such effort is naturally an inducement to enrich the dreary lives of seniors. It's a common practice among Filipinos, for example, that grandparents - the boomers essentially - revert to child rearing, only this time it's the offspring of their children.
With Frank providing the impetus for seniors to be creative and relive dreams they otherwise failed to pursue in their youth, the art program is already transforming not just lives, but also outlook beyond biological or chronological age.
There's the idiom that says "you're only as old as you feel" which means, according to the dictionary, that "your health is a bigger factor in what you are able to do than your actual age." Clearly, that's exactly how Frank's art program amounts to.
While Frank expounds on his ideas, an elderly man ambled in. He wanted to paint but didn't have the paraphernalia such as brush, paints, canvas, etc. to illustrate what he had in mind.
"So I provided him. He promised to replace whatever he used next time he came back for another session," Frank explains. Soon enough, from the blank canvas in front of him emerged images of carnations in solid red.
The scene at FCT that Wednesday afternoon was like being in a workshop where every aspiring painter is glued to the white canvas working on what would appear as a replica of Frank's Victoria Park Harbour painting.
Others in the room create their own masterpieces, relying mainly on what their minds tell the hands to portray in brush strokes and color combinations they understood from Frank.
For boomers just learning the ropes, the result is outstanding. Late bloomers they're all are, naturally creative and great painters in their own right. (Copyright 2025. All Rights Reserved).
