Alfredo Esquillo is best known for works whose themes spring from faith and its icons. Introspective and immersive partly because of their unparalleled realism, his pieces strongly articulate the complexities that underlie the desire to believe in a greater force that is often beyond human understanding. Many of his works pivot around this central question. They reference local settings, biblical narratives, and personas like Mang Lauro, a healer and local cult leader whose life he closely followed. Steeped in a distinct language, Esquillo’s art entwines the universal yearning that faith commands with vernacular understandings of the self that aspires towards it. His more recent works vividly articulate the ideas of ‘loob’ (inner self), ‘labas’ (outer world) and ‘lalim’ (depths of existence): spheres that make the firmaments of faith. He aptly situates these realms within a moral world forged by struggles that shape local history.