Raul Lebajo’s earth dream

In what seemed like the middle of suburban nowhere, a candy house has been planted. This is the description most people give when they visit the studio-home of veteran artist Raul Lebajo in Katarungan Village, tucked away within the sprawling expanse of southern Muntinlupa. Lebajo’s dream house, fashioned with the artist’s own imagination (he had the architect follow his design for the house, rather than the other way around). From the outside, it does seem like a typical Bavarian chalet, complete with three identical gables, and large framed windows on the ground floor. The candy is in the color of the facade: salmon pink, with accents of green, white and blue. Going through the front door, we are greeted by the cathedral-high expanse of the artist’s painting studio, the ceiling being twenty feet tall. The entire house, it seems, was built around the studio, with the normal ceiling-height dining room, kitchen-bar and artist-son Nikulas’ bedroom studio tucked into one side of the ground level, while the living room and other quarters are in the upper stories, sharing space with even more studios.

The arrangement of space befits the owner’s requirements and desires: a series of public rooms are used as art studio space, wherein private rooms were constructed around it, ideal for the father-and-son to work and rest comfortably under the same roof. The ground level studio is for the heavy stuff: acrylic and oil paintings that often measure up to four-by-eight feet. The second- storey studio, a loft that can be reached by a long flight of stairs, and just around the corner from the master bedroom, is for Raul’s intricately designed but grand drawings done on paper with charcoal pencil. Up another flight of stairs is the third studio–really more of an alcove with a small window, jutting across the children’s bedrooms in a third, final loft. This is where Raul does his intimate small drawings, caressed by the breeze blowing in from Laguna Lake on lazy afternoons. "Ang gusto kong bahay, matulis!" joked the artist. "I designed the house myself, and built it from scratch after completely demolishing the older structure that was here when we bought the lot. As you see, the spaces are all designed around the studios, because this is an artist’s house. The chairs and tables are all designed by me, and executed by craftsmen, including the dining set, the bar, the cabinets, and so on. Nikulas has his own mini-studio, so that we don’t conflict tasks." All this space, by the way, fits inside a miniscule 168-square-meter lot.

Known as a painter of surreal images of nature and fantastic creatures, Raul Lebajo has works that are often linked to that of fellow PWU alumnus Prudencio "Amor" Lammarroza. But whereas Amor concentrates on his candy-colored stones set on dry, desolate riverbeds, Raul focuses more intently on insects, birds, and other beasts that seem menacing, but are really attempts by the artist to come to terms with their destruction in our push to modernize. Born in 1941, the 60-year-old Tacloban, Leyte native has spent most of his life migrating from neighborhood to neighborhood before finally setting his roots here, in his dream house that his nature paintings helped build, five years ago.

In an intimate conversation with The Philippine STAR, Lebajo shares his experiences in life, and how he has parlayed his talent to rise above hardship and poverty, to become the master of his own earth manor.

Philippine STAR: How did you first decide on becoming an artist?

Raul Lebajo: I was a precocious draftsman even when I was still in elementary. I would often draw on blackboards in Tacloban to my fellow classmates’ delight and teacher’s encouragement. My parents, though, wanted me to become a businessman. In the Fifties, when I grew up, life was still hard for an artist, and so I tried to follow their wishes. We migrated to Manila in 1957, and after finishing high school at FEU, I soon enrolled in Business Administration at the same school. After three years I stopped, because I realized that all I wanted to be was an artist. I was able to convince my sister, who was a doctor, to sponsor my Fine Arts education at UE’s College of Fine Arts, which was then located at their Aurora Boulevard campus. I studied there for two years (1965-67). After winning the Shell Student Art Competition in 1967, I was convinced by artist-teacher Mariano Madarang to shift to PWU, where I graduated in 1969.

Who were most influential in developing your artistic direction as an artist?

My basic formation was in UE, where I was mentored by Florencio Concepcion, who is an abstractionist. My works from the late-1960s are in part due to his mentorship. I did a series of large grid paintings influenced by Kazumi, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as Cubist paintings in the style of Picasso. Through reading art books, I was also attracted to the art of Robert Motherwell, especially in terms of composition, which was very minimalistic, and flat or planar. I was also attracted to patterning when I read the works of Richard Diebenkorn, and Louise Nevelson. But well before this, I was painting in a very realistic manner, like landscape and still life. This was in 1965 to 1967, because of my friendship with Sofronio Y. Mendoza. I combined my previous love of nature with an abstract sensibility to result in what I called my Rotorelief paintings in 1969-1970. These were large relief paintings made by cutting up ping pong balls and sticking them to the surface of the painting, and then adding paint in textured shape-patterns that resemble hard-edged minimal abstraction, but using very subdued colors like brown, white and black.

What is your artistic vision? How do you want to identify yourself?

My concept was to view nature, which I previously painted in realistic shapes, as something transformed by my vision. I have often been called a Surrealist for this reason. Though I do not deny it, sometimes I find it too simplistic to label me as one. I prefer to see myself as exploring art that has no boundaries, no rules. But I also want to show the truth, the reality we see in nature, that is its destruction via pollution, over-exploitation, at kinahon ng tao. This love for nature is what spurred me to become a landscapist and portraitist in the mid-1960s; and my abstract art in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, I began to change colors to veer away from the starkness of my earlier work. Earlier, I used more browns and sepias in the later years, I used bright colors, like electric blue, scarlet, deep green, and golden yellow. I also started concentrating on still life objects, which are after all pieces of nature itself, but blown up in larger scale. I’ve always preferred large-scale artworks to small-scale ones. Mas masarap gumawa ng malaki eh. You’re not limited by the size of the canvas. I have more freedom of movement, and I find the result more beautiful. I also started to return to representational art at this time, because as I see it, kasama ka sa nature. Man must not be separated from the environment; that’s the reason why we are so destructive. We must have a feeling for nature, dapat mararamdaman mo siya. I also wanted to heighten the public’s awareness on the plight of the environment. In the late-1980s, I started to paint botanical "creatures," mutant plant-animal creatures, not because I want people to become disgusted with it, but rather, I find it interesting, the interdependent relationship of the two.

What are your convictions and beliefs as an artist?

I believe that art has no boundaries. Artists must be free to explore. That is why I explored everything from realism to abstraction, because I should be free to express my emotions, and thoughts as an artist. Artists should also be consistent to their convictions. I have shown this by concentrating on one concern all my artistic life – nature. Even in my abstracts, I showed nature. The round elements of my Rotorelief paintings, for example, are actually representations of the moon, a theme that I have expanded from round to crescent shapes in the 1990s. I also believe that to be an artist, you must not commercialize your own art. By this I mean that truly beautiful art must not be just for the sake of selling. Mas maganda ang gawa kung walang perang iniisip. Mas gumaganda kung sumasabay ka.