“The sacred place where one can get lost in the world of creativity amidst the silence…where the sound of calmness speaks to your heart…” wrote Lisa de Leon Zayco, a mosaic artist living in Bacolod, as the solitary calm drove her to do even more intricate mosaic designs as the pandemic closed in on the world. Lisa’s outstanding work is seen in Bao, the symbolic carabao metal sculpture that stands in front of the Negros Museum, with the sugar story of Negros done in mosaic on its entire body.
‘Bao’ by Lisa de Leon Zayco
‘Bao’ by Lisa de Leon Zayco
So much has been said about discovering one’s inner artistic self over these past two years of solitude; and yet, it isn’t quite enough, judging from the near ecstasy and emotion that accompany the narrative of each individual when asked about their respective journeys into their inner selves. Although each took on different paths, the output was of a similar template: creativity expressed in a variety of abstracts and mediums, unknowingly fueled by the driving force—solitude.
World renowned dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp, whose greatest contribution to dance was a quirky combination of classical ballet and modern contemporary dance, attests to solitude as an unavoidable part of creativity, along with its by-product of self-reliance. The twists, jerks, and off-kilter turns of her dance style were all conceived with just her mind and body for company. Aloneness gives way to wanting to express oneself, unafraid of seeing one’s real self, which is the value of spending time with I, myself, and me. Whether we like it or not, the pandemic produced a sense of aloneness, despite having other people around us. There is more introspection in the monotony of a quiet life, which, Albert Einstein claims, “stimulates the creative mind.”
‘There was brokenness everywhere…It was like art mirroring life’—Raymond Lauchengco
Sculpture by Raymond Lauchengco
Sculpture by Raymond Lauchengco
In the case of singer and director Raymond Lauchengco, pre-pandemic projects all fell silent as he realized he lost his work. As early as March 2020, he started doing things with his hands with materials supplied by friends. Whereas before, life was all about fulfilling one singing engagement after another or directing show after show, he started to experience ikigai, a Japanese concept that gives one “a reason for being,” and in his case, he started doing something he discovered he was passionate about. Six successful online exhibits featuring functional art in wood and resin and wooden furniture were the results of this newfound passion.
Then in November, he learned the art of kintsugi, a Japanese technique of restoring broken things, emphasizing the mended cracks with gold. “There was brokenness everywhere…It was like art mirroring life.” Kintsugi celebrated brokenness through restoration, as he equated re-joining with the healing of scars.
‘I needed major mending myself, having lost two sisters, four months apart’—Sheila Francisco
Sheila Francisco’s ‘kintsugi’
Seeing Raymond’s posts on Facebook, theater actress Sheila Francisco marveled at his work. “I loved looking at his work on Facebook. The idea behind kintsugi resonated strongly with me: mending the broken and making it new. I needed major mending myself, having lost two sisters, four months apart.”
She convinced Raymond to conduct a workshop online, which he did, and Sheila got hooked. “It didn’t just allow me to have some form of creative expression, but more importantly, it healed me,” she says. Raymond muses that “in times of so little, we can give,” as his message during his online kintsugi lessons of celebrating imperfections and brokenness has not only given his students a sense of fulfilment in making beautiful things, but has filled a psychological as well as a spiritual void, tapping into “creativity created by a creative God.”
Watercolor by Vivian Recio
Watercolor by Vivian Recio
Production and talent manager Vivian Recio’s soft watercolors emerged suddenly on Facebook. From someone known for her no-nonsense work discipline, the tranquil landscapes and florals sprung up online almost daily, each with an annotation of paper size and quality and watercolor brands she used, and from the looks of it, she looked like she was darned serious. Living alone, she has time to study with various online teachers from abroad. And as her technique matured into more controlled and mature strokes, more daring color combinations and even inventive figurations in her florals, she found her niche; she found herself. And soon, her posts began to mention sales of her work.
Vivian Recio—it was her little secret from childhood
Curious as to where she was at, I finally called her, and a cheery-voiced Vivian whom I had known to be almost businesslike in tone eagerly talked about how she finally confronted her hidden passion for art, something she had kept within, all those years that I had known her, and beyond. It was her little secret from childhood. She spared no cost scouring art materials stores, buying the most expensive paint brands and watercolor paper, while neatly classifying them. The manner in which she organized her artwork was no different from her managerial style: organized, documented, disciplined. All her paintings, both sold and unsold were meticulously documented and filed. Some things never change. But within Vivian, something certainly did.
Edna Vida’s ‘Solace’
Artists who had already found their artistic milieu were not bypassed by the opportunity to express themselves in yet another art form. Dancer Edna Vida’s paintings of dancers in motion look uncannily like her. Her distinct foot arch, the proportions of her limbs and body are obvious, at least to those who have witnessed her performances through the years. The style she has adapted, though, is not of classical studied figuration, but rather a free, expressive flow of forms and colors.
“Dance has many rules,” Edna explains. ”I just kept painting and painting without rules, and I was just so happy to be free.” Painting was a hobby to her for at least 20 years, though her illustrations of dance surfaced only five years ago. “There’s no doubt dance still churns my creative juices. There’s always movement in my artwork and the flow comes naturally. The energy never left me. It moves my hand every time I hold the brush.”
It was during the pandemic that she and her dancer husband-turned-photographer Nonoy Froilan decided to mount a joint exhibit entitled Duets, a title befitting the couple, who had partnered extensively not just in dance, but also in choreographic works for plays and performance art and even theater performances.
‘I looked out on my muffled neighbors’—Phyllis Zaballero
Phyllis Zaballero, ‘Quarantine Window #2, Looking In,’ 2021, acrylic on canvas and wood
Phyllis Zaballero, ‘My Lockdown Window VIII, Makiling, Looking In,’ 2022, acrylic and ink on paper
On May 28 this year, accomplished artist Phyllis Zaballero opened a gallery exhibit showcasing the usual lively colors and fine details associated with her style. “I looked out on my muffled neighbors and our stilled streets; I contemplated my lush plants and whistled for the wild birds nesting in the trees patiently waiting to raucously fly down to my balcony for a bit of breakfast. My doors and windows framed this precious little world seemingly frozen in time and gave thanks to my Creator for my blessings.”
Her exhibit was aptly entitled Home Alone, which included doors and windows serving as frames for how she saw the world from within. Included in her exhibit were some unexhibited paintings she had done years ago, previously unframed paintings and sketches which had remained neatly stashed away in what she termed “the hectic years that followed.” After three long years of waiting to mount her exhibit, it finally came to pass under the most extraordinary circumstances, “an interesting view of how one artist’s isolation impasse has had its rewards after all.”
Artwork by Anton Reyes
Artwork by Anton Reyes
One fresh new artist whose works immediately sold out, much to his delight and surprise, just three days after his exhibit opened was Jose Antonio Reyes, who once upon a time was the right hand man of successful auctioneer Jaime Ponce de Leon. Commuting to and from work every day, just like young people of the digital age, Anton passed his travel time exploring the capabilities of digital art on his phone. It was not until the lockdown that his experimentation led him to a technique that combined digital efforts and traditional acrylic painting by making digital designs, painting over them, photographing them, cutting them out, and pasting them on a canvas. The result was a sort of digital form of traditional lacca povera, an 18th-century Venetian decorative technique that employed the covering of wooden furniture with intricate cut-out designs, then painting and lacquering them over. The overall effect, however, was not the same as the traditional, although the technique employed was the same. It was time on his hands that led him to experiment, with success, resulting in an art study grant in Germany.
Ryan Cayabyab’s early doodles in acrylic on canvas (Contributed photo)
The lockdown did not spare even seasoned and awarded artists the pleasure of newfound self-discoveries. National Artist for music Ryan Cayabyab, who at the start of the lockdown loaded his Facebook page with mouthwatering dishes, some of which he cooked himself, soon discovered the Gen Z art of digital design, which he applied not just to his online photographs, but to the backgrounds of his friends’ photographs, as well.
Ryan Cayabyab: Enjoyment of after dinner solitude
This lasted for a while, until he discovered the wonders of paintbrush. Coming in from the cold (“I didn’t know brush strokes, I never used acrylics”) Ryan, with the curiosity of a child, relished his sense of discovery, like noticing how one simple line could create a different mood in a portrait as he started painting his “Eye-fi” series focusing on his own eyes to depict a mood. He paralleled his style of instinctive painting to oido, a musical term for hearing music and playing it by ear, devoid of technique or concept, simply driven by musicality and a limited knowledge (or none) of reading notes.
Unlike in his music, Ryan does not employ any logical way of painting, but instead discovers techniques intuitively. For someone who has been extensively trained in the disciplines of music and who also teaches it, painting equates to a form of freedom and at the same time, a learning curve. In pre-pandemic times, he says, “We look for the noise and become part of the noise, because noise is a sign that you are alive.”
Conversely, now, it’s all about having nothing in your mind, in solitude, concentrated on what you are doing. For him, this enjoyment starts after dinner, in solitude, “when everyone is quiet and settled,” and he concentrates on 16 works for his “Eye-fi” mood series, representing the 16 voices he mentors for the Ryan Cayabyab Singers. The music, hence, will never die.
Adolf and Myrna Ortiz leading their Sunday family jazz sing-along, with their son Moy’s reflection in the mirror (Contributed photo)
And it never has for Atty. Adolf Ortiz, father of singer Moy Ortiz of The Company. Music has been his father’s connecting source to the outside world. “Since my dad is battling dementia, music is the sure-fire antidote for bringing him back to us,” explains Moy. “He is most lucid when he is playing the piano. Otherwise, he is withdrawn.”
Their post-lunch Sunday music family sing-alongs, which Moy posts on Facebook, is something I look forward to, as it reminds me of our own family sing-alongs with my grandparents. Atty. Adolf is a self-taught pianist who has specialized in jazz and standards since his teens. Moy’s mother, Myrna, is herself a music major. “Music has been a part of all our family gatherings ever since,” and during lockdown, says Moy.
Adolf’s music has brought some nostalgia for days gone by, a meditation of things that were.
Stories of creativity and innovation in times of crisis, isolation, and quarantine are nothing new, as evidenced by historical records of well-known personages who came out with some of their best works under the threat of killer plagues.
As theater productions came to a halt during the plague of 1606, William Shakespeare, jobless and with time on his hands, wrote the plays King Lear, Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra within that year. Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravity in the time of the bubonic plague. Artist Edvard Munch documented his own affliction with the Spanish Flu in his Self Portrait with Spanish Flu. The collection of novellas which tells of a group of friends telling stories in quarantine during a plague by Florentine writer and poet Giovanni Boccacio, entitled The Decameron, is classic Medieval literature composed of “tales of renewal and recreation in defiance of a decimating plague,” which became a literary masterpiece.
Research papers from several international universities studying theories on creativity and innovation in times of crisis have so far provided “empirical evidence for a significant increase in instances of everyday creativity during the lockdown period.” (Frontiers in Psychology, 23 March 2022).
Spending time with one’s self unleashes your will to express yourself, get to know yourself, who you are, what you are, what you value most, what you want to work on. No pressure. And as mosaic artist Lisa de Leon Zayco continues to journal, “In this creative space, a significant part of who I am was reborn. A part of what I once felt was blown to the wind and never to be found again, came to life…no longer lost but found…no longer tarnished but full of luster…And though there are moments when emotions are in the doldrums, I find hope, if I look beyond what is here and now. This is why this creative space breathes life and recharges my core.”
