"Cid Reyes, like a passionate lover, extols women to the heights with respect and adulation, and places them like goddesses in his aesthetics. His women are self-assured, oozing with dynamism on the surface of his canvas, bedecked with undefined forms and brilliant colors."
Buena Familia by Sid Reyes, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005
The essence of a woman transcends beyond space and time and like a seasoned wine, the older she gets the more she defines and completes the meaning and beauty of being woman. However, like men, she has her own conquest too, that is, to be constantly desired and adored rather than deserted like an object when youth and physical beauty wilt away.
Cid Reyes, like a passionate lover, extols women to the heights with respect and adulation, and places them like goddesses in his aesthetic creation. His women are self-assured, oozing with ineffable power on the surface of his canvas, bedecked with undefined forms and brilliant colors.
Departing from his whitish abstract paintings, Cid Reyes ingeniously combines figurative and abstract elements: the juxtaposition of female figure emerges as muse or goddess, more imposing than the brilliant and craggy surface of his canvas.
Equally thought-provoking is how he redefines the parallelisms of art, literally and figuratively, and the role of women in his aesthetics.
Tres Marias by Cid Reyes, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005
Here, his art raises a discursive proposition in redefining the role of women in our modern society apart from her domestic role as a mother, a wife or a daughter. A woman, for instance, is not confined to a limited function much as art is not restricted to a particular style or movement. Both have endless possibilities of becoming in what the Greek philosopher Aristotle posited in his “Act and Potency”.
At the outset, art transcends beyond space and time in as much as the role of a woman does. Art is inexhaustible, per se, but it is also limited within the realms of the artist’s creative visions. The more an artist discovers the uncharted bastion of creativity, the more he or she becomes.
In essence, it is the inexhaustible possibilities of art that makes the artist constantly evolve in the process of art-making as a woman does in her indispensable role in the post-modern society as career woman, a mother, a wife or a lover.
Poetic and metaphorical, the suite of Cid Reyes’ Demoiselles de Manille poignantly appeals to the sensual perception of the viewers, stimulating the human reason and emotion. It is metaphorical because it addresses the definition of women in the post-modern society; poetic because it reasserts the symbolic role of women within our culture and society.
Similarly, like the boundless possibilities of art and the unrestricted role of women, the artist’s quest for meaning and self-actualization goes beyond the mere functions as he relatively excels in all his endeavors
La Viuda, Unica Hija by Cid Reyes (Acrylic on Canvas, 2005)
As art critic and author of several art books, the man’s austerity and discipline to his multi-profession pursuits is amazingly extraordinary. Assuming different roles as executive in advertising, art writer, author and painter par excellence, elevate him to the status of a superhuman literally and figuratively.
How can the man be so creative in his art, write a regular art column on the daily paper, launch a coffee table book occasionally, and work full-time as an executive in one of the leading advertising agencies in the country?
As a painter, he is constantly contriving a fresh and dynamic expression of his art. The artist is restless until his creative power is exhausted on his canvas and, then, he starts all over again. His creative passion is more assertive though on the dynamic textures of his canvas than in the presence of this gentle and soft-spoken artist.
Equally compelling is his style of art writing and criticism, in which he masters the lucidity of inductive and deductive reasoning in a way that an ordinary person understands. In similar manner, occupying a higher position in the corporate world is both mentally and emotionally exhausting especially of one is sharing a responsibility of running the company.
The bottom line and the competitiveness in the business world lie on the competitiveness of the leaders and their moral responsibility in maintaining the quality of services to the client and to their employees.
Photo Courtesy of Camille Dela Rosa. Posted by Hello
Cid Reyes, as the Vice President of an advertising agency, possesses the natural quality of a leader and goes out of his way by letting his subordinates come out their best creative outputs. He has his own style of leadership and his unique way of dealing with people resonates with his creative thinking.
Like the aesthetic quality of his art and writings, he infuses a creative style of management in his works, a unique quality that any corporate company should imbibe and practice.
Akin to the parallelisms between his art and his subject, the artist himself is not bracketed, in philosophical sense, to his facticity as an art critic or a painter or a corporate executive. He goes beyond all these labels and unveils himself to all the inexhaustible possibilities that a man can become within the span of his existence.
Cid Reyes is simply a creative artist of magnificent vision, a deep thinker that possesses the qualities of a Renaissance man.
© Danny Sillada
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Cover girl, Debutant by Cid Reyes Acrylic on Canvas 2005)
