Ryan Cayabyab's Next Act: The Maestro Becomes a Visual Artist
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There's a fantasy brewing in the great Ryan Cayabyab's head. A symphony that has nothing to do with music. As it turns out, he finds himself getting reacquainted with painting. Last year, at 69, the maestro hosted his first exhibition entitled Tunay Na Ligaya, a 16-part collection comprised of 53 paintings meant to signal a new period of self-discovery and reinvention (It was, of course, an ode to the 16 voices in Cayabyab's seminal record, One, in 1981).
At the upcoming Art Fair Philippines, Cayabyab will be showcasing one of those same windows to his soul in Galeria Paloma's un|Tethered. An "eyefie" of his, as he puts it, will be displayed together with works from the likes of Martin Honasan, Barbie Almabis, Basti Artadi, Carla Gamalinda, Carlos, Carina Santos, and many others. It's a tour de force of creative crossovers, you could say, as artists were asked to reimagine their works in new media form. In the National Artist's case, it was a chance to play in a different kind of orchestra.
An Orchestra Playing and It’s Not the Band
The relationship between music and art stretches back centuries. Hearing color and seeing sound isn't a shocking psychological phenomenon. During the turn of the 20th century, the theorist and painter Wassily Kandinsky was adamant about the evidence of synaesthesia, a condition where the brain reroutes sensory information through unrelated senses. People who are said to have this can taste words or link colors to letters and so on.
It may not appeal to science, but maybe it’s better thought of as fleeting spiritual vibrations. For Cayabyab, an orchestra of color defines his paintings, bending shades as lyrically as hitting the piano keys. "All I know is that I am lousy at realism and that abstract paintings are attractive," he says. "But truthfully, I am still seeking what visual language I will consciously pursue because presently, I am still experimenting and discovering myself."
A true icon of Original Pinoy Music, Cayabyab is looking for other venues of expression these days.
The exploration and subsequent application for music and art have quite the contrasts, Cayabyab says. “During the creative process of refining the music in my head, actual sounds from the piano are produced. This is usually to confirm or affirm the abstract musical thoughts in my mind.”
Music crystallizes as the composition arrives at its natural order, and is refined through a battalion of other musicians and performers. “In all, music involves a lot of sound space and other people.”
Conversely, visual art requires the maker to be alone and silent, Cayabyab thinks. In the National Artist’s experience, he finds solace in the supreme quiet welcoming, a departure from the music halls and venues he’s remade in his image. The conductor doesn’t even listen to music while painting. He’s “extremely happy” not to, really.
“Right now, I like the solitude of making art. I can calm my mind even if the creative process still involves a lot of imagined noise in my head,” he expresses.
The similarities, of course, are equally as endless. “In both music making and visual art creation, I usually start with a general idea of what I want to do: A song is already done in my head but I allow the physical creation to meander, experiment, or vary,” he says of the process.
This method applies to his art practice, as well. While he always starts with a full image in his head, he says that he relies too much on that first stroke of paint. “It’s the same as when I sit on the piano to write music. The first note or first several notes already define the direction of my music.”
Seeing Ghosts
At the age of 14, Cayabyab even won the 1968 YMCA National Painting Contest. He never had any formal training. But he did have four relatives who, at one time or another, lived in their home and pursued fine arts courses at UP Diliman.
"My father's two younger sisters and two cousins created, painted, and left their unfinished canvases, used oil paint tubes, and throw-away brushes in our house. Of course, being a kid, I was always kibitzing at their backs," he explains. He would bombard them with questions ("What were those tubes? What's linseed oil? What's grumbacher? What that gooey white stuff was...") as they worked. "I was a nuisance in a way," he recalls.
The son of a single parent (Cayabyab's mother, a fellow musician, passed away when he was six years old), Cayabyab had three other siblings who were still in school. “Winning at anything helps,” he thought at the time. The YMCA cash prize would certainly do wonders. “I realized that my hapless government employee of a father was hard up making all ends meet.”
He picked up one unfinished canvas, covered It with the “gooey stuff” (I’m guessing gesso), and on he went using leftover tubes of oil paint, of green and violet, in particular.
“The story behind the painting is funny, really,” he says fondly, “because when my dad saw it he asked what the painting was about. I told him they were figures representing different nationalities, and that the title of the painting was ‘Mankind is One.’ He retorted that they all looked like 'mga multo!’”
In the studio. One of his favorite commissions was the massive abstract mural "Directions" he did for Landbank, which now hangs at its head office in Manila.
He brought the painting to the YMCA Building at old Arroceros (the land where present-day SM Manila stands). The young Cayabyab rode a tricycle from UP Village to a bus stop that would take him to Quiapo before taking hitching another jeepney to Arroceros. “No big deal.” The real kicker in this anecdote wasn’t the long trip, but rather what happened at the secretariat next.
Right before submitting his entry, Cayabyab went to the restroom to unwrap the painting from the layers of newspaper that coddled it this whole time. To his shock, the oil paint wasn’t dry enough just yet.
“The page nearest to the painting got caught up in the wet paint,” he tells me. “I tediously took out the slivers of paper but wasn't so successful. So I submitted the painting in that state.”
A few weeks pass by and a telegram comes. With it came the news that he had won third prize in the oil painting category. “I collected my P50 prize, bought two cans of corned beef, two cans of Vienna sausage, and some art materials.” Out of it came a box of basic Guitar brand watercolor and some colored pencils. He threw in some sando and underwear for good measure. Of course, whatever was left was, he gave it to his old man.
“I told him, ‘My ghosts won!’ and he was so happy.”
Between You and Me
"The exhibit was a long shot," Cayabyab says of his latest endeavor with Galeria Paloma for Art Fair Philippines 2024. For un|Tethered, Cayabyab offered one of his 16 "eyefies." He collaborated with digital artist Jopet Arias to add an augmented reality layer for the diptych. The composer was too worried about seeming "unqualified" to be part of the roster.
Cayabyab was especially familiar with Artadi and Carlos' works, as he had bought some pieces from them a while back. In 2021, he bought a painting by Carlos, having been so fascinated with how the artist rendered his images in acrylic. "I didn't know anything about acrylic until that day when the painting arrived. Ang ganda!"
The "eyefie," in question.
He would ask friends about the medium. Doing more research, he understood that it "sounded like watercolor." The thing was, he wasn't good with watercolor either. "I bought my first tube, black, and started painting on paper. I liked it so much, and then I graduated to buying small tubes of red, yellow, and blue and everything was just about experimenting."
An exercise in expression, all this. Funny enough, this may well be his next act. During dinner with the same team who worked with him for his first exhibit, he lets me in on a little secret. Cayabyab, apparently, is thinking about going back to school again, this time, as a fine arts major. "I don't know if I can still hack it. I am turning seventy this year! Good luck to me." Paint, as it seems, is as mysterious an instrument as any he's ever wielded.
The Un|Tethered full catalogue will be on view at galeriapaloma.com upon the official opening of Art Fair Philippines on February 16, 2024.
