Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

ABOUT THE WORK

As a painter, Lao Lianben focuses more on attitude and essence rather than style. His is an art that is rooted in personal struggles and profound confrontations with the vicissitudes and contradictions of a turbulent world. In a February 2023 interview with Lala Singian published in Lifestyle Inquirer, Lao revealed that the odds did not always favor him. As a child, he lived in a cramped house along Arlegui Street in Quiapo with his mother, grandmother, six siblings, and two helpers. “Things were in complete disarray as there was really no one in charge of the household,” Lao says. “To escape the daily chaos, I would go up to the roof and keep to myself. That was the only space in the house where I could be free.” From the “grueling hot nights,” as Lao puts it, and swarms of mosquitoes pestering what is supposed to be a peaceful sleep for him and his family, it was a depressing cul-de-sac. But that very moment of struggle and seemingly helpless conditions came an artistic awakening in Lao’s inner soul—and the birth of the Zen spirit inside of him that continues to be a balm for a constantly distressing and disconcerting earthly existence. Lao recalls in the same interview: “I have learned to put myself to sleep and not complain of discomfort by staring up intently at the mosquito net while I try to make out figures of animals (an elephant) or imagine that I’m looking up into the night sky of cloud formations. My imagination and musings made me forget about my body drenched in sweat and lulled me to sleep. Through this experience, I have not only learned to see with my eyes but also to think with them. Looking back, I must say that my art process is greatly informed by what I see, and my ideas are developed more visually.” Now that we have taken a glimpse into the artist’s early struggles and history comes a better understanding of this absorbing piece titled Thinking of a View, a work from Lao’s earlier artistic phases. Thinking of a View comes from the same period when Lao won the prestigious Mobil Art Award in 1983. Prior to that, Lao had already relished the taste of success, having won in the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Annual an honorable mention in 1970 and second prize in 1977. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this piece is the center, which is outlined with grids, evoking two areas of discipline: visual art and cartography. In maps, grids help determine the exact location of a particular place using latitude and longitude. In the visual arts, especially in drawing, grids are of utmost importance in rendering subjects accurately, stimulating spatial awareness, and ensuring accurate proportions. The center, formed by Lao’s cutting of this portion of the canvas, possesses an inherently instinctive atmosphere, as evidenced by Lao’s scraping of the surface, leaving jarring scratches and forming crevices that expose the composition’s wooden base. With this interesting intertwining of cartography—the science of map making—and the freedom inherent in the visual arts, Lao highlights an inner landscape (a spiritual vista if one may deem it) of the psyche that is borne from observation, nourished by contemplation, and immortalized by an artist who genuinely lives his own art: an art that centers around the beauty of dynamic and sublime stillness. By spontaneously scraping his composition, Lao empowers his subconscious to flow unbridled, revealing his penchant for the soothing solemnity of active musing; his spiritual mind is unraveled, and it invigorates the viewer to engage in the virtue of one’s peace and quiet. In a work that speaks to its viewer, it evokes in us Lao’s early life: harnessing thinking through seeing, in which the invisible is made visible, the abstract becomes a palpable reality, and the imagined turns to actuality. Lao comfortingly stimulates us to do the same. (Adrian Maranan)