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Noel de Guzman on painting with fire and the silent power of a smile
The Filipino designer on his sold-out exhibitions in the 1990s, a terrifying incident with a gas canister, and his daily Hong Kong hikes
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I WAS BORN in 1967 in Caloocan, just north of Manila, in the Philippines. I have three siblings. I’m the eldest. My father had a much bigger clan, 10 siblings. Imagine the reunions we have on my father’s side! My family went into different kinds of businesses: textiles, poultry, restaurants. At one time we were an egg distributor, so we gathered them from nearby provinces wholesale and retailed them in the city. Whenever my dad had a new venture, I’d be there observing and sometimes I’d be the cashier or errand boy. My cousins were my neighbours. It was fun. Every weekend, we were 10 members of the clan, swimming and biking. We would play board games the whole day.
I was the quietest boy in the class. I’m an observer. I don’t speak a lot. I was probably a visual person from an early age. I think that’s how I came to be an artist. At school, I loved art, but I loved all subjects, dipping into different things. There were plenty of extracurricular arts classes at school, too, where I could do doodling, sketches, clay work, papier-mâché. I did a degree in fine arts at the University of the Philippines, majoring in visual communications. Some of my professors, including Solomon Saprid and Jose Joya, were national artists.
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