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
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.
I WAS THE FIRST artist in the clan, so it’s a good thing that my parents supported my decision, because, of course, they wanted an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer. After leaving university, I immediately started earning. I was an in-house artist for a credit card company, the layout artist for the newsletter. I’m a photographer as well, so if there was someone who had fraudulently used a credit card and was in jail, I would be sent to get a profile photo of the guy. If he didn’t cooperate, he’d get a smack from the guard. After that, I went into advertising. I got into J Walter Thompson in Manila. It was a demanding but creative job. I would work until 10pm and sometimes sleep in the office for several days and my family would bring me fresh clothes. There were some big clients, including McDonald’s, Philippine Airlines and United Airlines. We would produce television and print ads. My earnings went straight to the family.
I’M MARRIED and have two sons. The younger one is into the performing arts and has done two Shakespeare roles. My elder son is a manager at the Airport Authority Hong Kong. I arrived in Hong Kong when I was 26, hired by Tatler. I landed in October 1993. I headed a team of designers and we worked on the Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand Tatlers. I worked there for six years but got tired of working on the same thing so moved to Haymarket, then on to the South China Morning Post for a year and my last full-time job was Time Out in 2013. I became self-employed after that, which means I can do my hiking in the morning, run errands and have an 18-minute nap every afternoon, well almost every day. I don’t know why I take 18 minutes, but I instruct Siri to give me 18 minutes and I always wake up so refreshed.
