I had no models or artists I looked up to. “Something in me was always wanting to come out, and I found that release in painting. He left school once he felt he had learned enough about the history, the theory, and the techniques of art to express himself. I had a fastback Mustang but my best sale was a Shelby Cobra.” But again another personal crisis blew up and he enrolled in a community college to study painting. I specialized in Mustangs - you could show me a Ford screw and I could tell you the year and model it came from. “I had a Russian mechanic, but I took care of the interiors myself. He set up a business restoring American muscle cars. I just wanted to express myself, to work from my subconscious. Something in me was always wanting to come out, and I found that release in painting. When I left, my boss was very sorry to lose me.” When the big steel container that you’re lifting comes crashing to the ground, you can feel the jolt running down your spine. The Midwest was too cold so he later moved to California, and quickly realized what all dreamseekers in LA wake up to: that he had to start all over again at the bottom rung of the ladder. In 1995, he took the opportunity to go on a film fellowship at the Art Institute of Chicago. That intensity had been brewing in Raul the person for some time, leading to and compounded by domestic problems. There is a quiet intensity in his performance.” “Companion” (2022) Of his performance in Himpapawid, reviewer Jude Bautista noted that “Raul Arellano as the main character is able to show the frustrations of the common man without going over the top. “We were trained in method acting,” says Raul, “and it got to the point that I became so immersed in my character that other people on the set found it unnerving.” He would go on to act in the movies, in the crime drama Akin ang Puri (1996) directed by Toto Natividad, Batang West Side (2001) directed by Lav Diaz, and Himpapawid (2009) directed by Raymond Red. His first great obsession was acting, to the point of becoming a resident actor of Tanghalang Pilipino at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, playing a smoldering Tony Javier in a production of Nick Joaquin’s Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. Raul’s path to painting was neither straight nor easy. All he has of him is a self-portrait-and, of course, a passion for art that runs in the family his cousin Carlos or “Chuckie,” the son of architect Otilio, was a formidable art patron and collector Chuckie’s younger sister Agnes remains one of the country’s leading and most imaginative sculptors Cesar’s brother Salvador or “Dodong” Arellano became a well-known painter of horses and game fowl in California. Many young painters-like their writing counterparts whom I meet at workshops and teach in school-also seem to think that the only worthy subject is death and despair, which invariably means dark canvases devoid of any suggestion of wonder and mystery, let alone delight.Īs it turned out, Raul never met his grandfather, who died five years before Raul was born in 1965 (Raul’s father was Juan’s third son Cesar). There’s a lot of brilliance and energy out there to be sure, but also much safe and tiresome repetitiveness from artists who’ve settled on a commercial formula, such that their work no longer exudes emotional power. I’m by no means an art critic, but my wife Beng (a professional art conservator and watercolorist) and I are museum rats and enjoy both traditional and modernist art, and peek into the local art scene when we can. When, one day, he messaged me to ask if we could meet up, I said yes, eager to learn what he could recall of his grandfather but also to get to know him and his art. Born in Cagayan de Oro, Raul has been based for almost 30 years now in the United States, but he has recently been returning to the Philippines more often. My inquiries into the background of my paintings led me to cross paths-initially online-with Juan’s grandson Raul Arellano, who turned out to be an accomplished painter in his own right. Less known to many was that Arellano’s first love was painting, and it was a passion he pursued throughout his life. A few months ago, I had the good fortune of coming into ownership of four watercolors by Juan Arellano (1888-1960), the famous architect of such landmarks as the Metropolitan Theater, the Post Office Building, and the Legislative Building (now the National Museum).
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