In many families, personal interests tend to fall by the wayside as siblings follow each other into conventional careers. But it's the reverse for the Ferraris siblings - Joel, Nelson, Jocelyn, Noel and Edgar - whose love of art is mutually reinforcing.
That's how the five became well-known artists in the Philippines, despite their father's insistence that they pursue more secure professions. All are winners of regional and national competitions, although only Joel and Edgar have pursued full-time careers in art. Now they are celebrating their reciprocal inspiration with their first joint exhibition, It Runs in the Blood, part of the Philippine Arts Festival.
Hong Kong-based Joel is the eldest. Among the 49-year-old's earliest memories are he and siblings sprawled on the floor of their home in Iloilo City, Western Visayas, drawing on paper that their mother brought back from the local fashion school, where she was a registrar.
'I started doing this when I was very young and when my brothers came along, they fell into [it] too, quite naturally,' he recalls. 'After a point, we began fighting over pieces of paper.'
Although entirely self-taught, the siblings were already winning regional and national competitions while in high school, pitting themselves against art school graduates and professional painters to get recognition because it was hard to stage their own exhibitions.
'We had no formal art training and, partly because oil paint was so expensive, we experimented with mixed media and indigenous methods such as using the clay from our province,' says Joel. 'Maybe that's why we won. In Manila, they hadn't seen art like ours.'