I Want to Meet Danny Sillada to Ask Him if this Piece Can Be the Cover of SARIMANOK TRAVELS

A painter, poet, philosopher, musician, performance artist,and literary & art critic from Mindanao, Philippines, Danny C. Sillada took a 360-degree detour from his vocation to the priesthood to embrace his artistic calling in the art world. As a multimedia artist, he has already received numerous citations and awards and to date, has already launched 11 one-man shows as a surrealist painter.

Hailed by author and art historian Manny Duldulao as the foremost Filipino colorist in the country, his images are inherently sensual, sensitive, and teeming with vibrant colors.

His art, according to the UP professor and art critic Reuben Ramas Cañete, “is culled from manifold, eclectic sources, as diverse as his biographical experiences, and the polyglotality of the embedded culture of the Mindanaoan. His works evoke a general air of hyperspatiality studded with the more everyday visualizations of terrestrial environments, reminiscent of the surreal hyperspaces of Yves Tanguy, E.M. Escher, Reñe Magritte and Paul Delvaux.”

Described as the Renaissance Man, a research paper submitted to the University of Asia and the Pacific, Sillada is the embodiment of a Filipino who defies the existing trend. His multi-faceted attribute in the humanities, as a Filipino Renaissance man, is identical with those of well-rounded historical figures during the Renaissance period in Europe.

“Sillada is a visual artist recognized in the Philippine art scene for his paintings and installation artworks, a literary writer who is into prose and poetry, a philosopher, whose writings are akin with existentialism, a first-rate performance artist, and also an art-critic.” (The Life & Works of Danny C. Sillada by Michael Marlowe Uy & Katrina Kalaw, September 2006).

Born 27 April 1963, Cateel, Davao Oriental, Philippines, Danilo “Danny” Castillones Sillada was cited as a gifted child in elementary school. He started painting and earning from his artworks at age 7 and was the first to receive the Artist of the Year Award in Maryknoll High School of Cateel in 1981, then run by the American Maryknoll Missionaries.

At 17, he entered the seminary and finished his BA Philosophy & Literature in 1986 at the Queen of Apostles College Seminary. He underwent his Bachelor in Sacred Theology and postgraduate studies in Pastoral Theology at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila (1987 to 1991).

In 1992, he left his vocation shortly before his ordination to the priesthood and pursued his MBA at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, Makati City. He worked as head of Marketing & Corporate Relations Office, Fortune Medicare, Inc., Makati City, from 1993 to 1995. In the last quarter of 1995, Sillada, then young executive, resigned from his promising career in the corporate world to become a full-time painter.

In 2003, he received two Pasidungog Centennial Awards in the fields of literary and visual arts in Davao Oriental, Philippines, and currently, one of the 13 featured artists of SAG (an on-line multimedia arts based in America, USA) along with international artists such as musicians, literary writers and visual artists.

As poet and philosopher, he has published his works local and international both on print and on-line publications. As a performance artist, he had already performed fifteen solo live art performances. In 2005, Sillada is one of the participants to the Philippine International Performance Art Festival (PIFAF) that was held in Manila on September 18-22, 2005 with one of his acclaimed solo performances “To Let the Blood Flow”.

To date, Sillada had already launched eleven one-man shows and organized a prestigious and historic multimedia art event known as the “DC Sillada Convergence” in 2006 and 2007 respectively at The Podium, Mandaluyong City, Philippines.

Danny Sillada is currently working on his forthcoming art exhibit and projects on ethnic music album and books on philosophical essays, collection of prose and journal and a novel due for publication in 2008 and 2009.

-Paula Brillson’s Profile of the Artist