These days, artist Reb Belleza likes to play loud music in his studio while he paints. But it’s not rock music that he favors. Instead, the former child star, who’s led a colorful life that involved a battle with drug dependence, tunes in to tracks more ideal for meditation.
“Gregorian chants, chants to Ganesh, the Holy Rosary in Spanish and Christian songs. It is a habit now,” he tells us via Facebook messenger one recent morning.
“The music is played a bit loud. It only stops when I stop working. Siguro sober na ako that is why the music takes over…the music is like a drug, I suppose.”
In solidarity with Muslims this Ramadan season, he’s also been fasting — he claims he’s been observing it for seven years now — “though today, I have to be honest, I had half a chili dog.”
“From a Christian point of view, I practice Ramadan in order to know how it is for our Muslim brothers and sisters…to restrain, to stop, to think of the divine. I don’t hear the prayers but it puts me in a prayerful mode,” he adds.
Now in his late 40s, Reb is at a point in his life where he has become both introspective and reflective. And that is evident in the 10 new works he is showing in an upcoming show, “Letters To My Godfather,” which opens at The Artologist Gallery in Greenhills on Jul 1.
“Lately my paintings have been mandala like,” he says, comparing it to his earlier works which he admits “feel dead”. “When I see them, I see memories, not a state of being (pa-deep). But I still enjoy seeing how I put the colours together and the imagery, though the paintings have no story.”
The “godfather” in the title of his show refers to the late actor Fernando Poe Jr, former screen partner of his mom, Divina Valencia, who paid for his college in the United States (Reb’s father, action star Bernard, died in his mid-30s in 1970 after he was gunned down by an Air Force captain).
It’s the second show that he’s dedicated to FPJ, the first one was a video installation at the Ayala Musuem which he made after an artist’s residency in Italy. With FPJ’s permission, Reb re-edited Mga Alabok Sa Lupa and Pagbabalik ng Lawin into a mash-up that ran 45 minutes long. It started in black and white and slowly turned to color, with the ending showing FPJ walking towards the camera.
This time, on canvasses measuring two feet by two feet, he’s written letters addressed to FPJ — approximating his actual correspondence with his godfather while he was studying in the US, about “longing for Manila, the horses, allowance” — which he then painted over in small squares of different colors.
“It’s so personal, but I’m going out on a limb,” he says, as he recalls his fondest memory of FPJ. “We were filming Sto. Cristo. I was three-and-a-half years old and my sister Maricris and I were in the cast. We had to ride the production bus or unit and unfortunately we had an accident. I woke up hours later in a hospital filled with the injured and dead, and the first person I saw was him by my bedside as I was throwing up and crying. I embraced him and wouldn’t let go, and he was there looking after me.”
Thus, this exhibition.
“I’m trying to show my love and grief. I miss him terribly. Grabe yung process, I was crying my eyes out.”
Letters To My Godfather opens on Jul 1 at The Artologist Gallery (81 Xavier St, Unit 203 Xavier Residences, San Juan; +63 2 6340100).
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