LOUIE CORDERO MAKES A PAINTING
Interviewed by Tony Godfrey
In his studio August 2023 – April 2024
Louie Cordero Studio 4th August 2023
We met first on 4th August. His father, to whom he had been very close, had died two weeks earlier. How was he coping, I asked. He went to his studio, he told me, put on music and just worked. When he works, he often becomes a night owl entirely, but on this occassion he was getting up at about 10.00 AM and works through to 2.00 AM.
Our intention was to meet regularly and talk about the progress of one painting. There were then three canvases in various stages in his studio. Our primary focus was to be the one that looked from a distance to be nothing but a yellow monochrome. Because we live on opposite sides of the same road, we had expected to meet more regularly than we did – in the event our schedules coincided less often than we expected.
In Cordero studio 4.8.2023
He told me that he had always seen himself as a town boy, brought up in Malabon then living in Cubao – both congested parts of Manila. Just before the pandemic he and his partner Isel had built a house near us in rural Batangas, in the shadow of Mount Maculot. He had expected to use it as a weekend home but to his surprise he now hardly ever leaves it. Manila to him in comparison now seems increasingly dirty, noisy and claustrophobic. The parks have all been covered with basketball courts which double up as refuges for the homeless when there is a typhoon or flood.
“How,” I asked, “do you start a painting?”
“With a drawing,” he replied, “that I then scan into the computer, then project on to the canvas, but I always change most of it.”
@4.8.23
“This painting, the big head, I have been adding bit after bit. It is for a show in Gajah Gallery, Singapore called Excess curated by Joyce Toh.
“I changed to using acrylic a long time ago. Oil paint made me physically sick. For the way I work now, acrylic is more appropriate. The drying tine you need for oil is a bore.”
8th AUGUST 2023
The recorder I was using on this day as I later found out had not worked, but after switching it off we carried on talking and I made notes.
We talked about Diego Rivera – he has a big book filled with reproductions of his murals. He too would like to do a mural.
“When I was in High School,” he told me, “Sanggawa[1] were my heroes – Elmer Borlongan, Mark Justiniani and the rest. I would take a long trip from Malibon by jeepneys to see their work at the Boston Gallery”
I asked how he and Kawayan de Guia had made their joint show at Drawing Room Gallery. Kawayan had sent his 100 half-finished paper works to him and during the pandemic Louie had completed 44 of them. The remaining 56 may be completed for a subsequent show at Drawing Room.
12th AUGUST 2023
TG. You want to finish the big painting before you get on to the other one? You reckon you will finish it within three to four days?
LC. Yeah.
TG. Are you getting annoyed with it?
LC. I feel like I am climbing a mountain
TG. Because it is so detailed?
LC. Yeah.
TG. And because you keep putting more stuff in. It has become like a black pulling all matter into it.
LC. Yeah, yeah, It is funny you say the black hole because the last thing I paint will be a black hole in his smart-phone.
TG. So, he is about to be swallowed. The way you work: you draw the main outlines and then come back and fill in all the details?
LC. In college we were trained in oil painting. We were trained to mix the paint directly on the canvas. [Louie makes lots of movements with his hands as though he is mixing paint.] But here it is more precise. I mix the colours in advance. Even the gradations – I mix them in advance.
TG. Looking over there, I can see lots of those little pots that you get soy sauce or ginger in sushi meals filled with ready mixed paint.
LC. Yeah, so this [pointing] is the yellow to paint a mango. When I wake up each day, I am already thinking how to paint certain areas, how to manoeuvre stuff around. I mean for me this is all about problem solving. How to finish a painting.
TG. Technical issues.
LC. At the moment all I want to do is work
TG. Hence taking on such a time-consuming project as this super-detailed painting.
LC. I planned this painting to be much looser. However, I don’t know why, over the last few weeks it became more detailed.
TG. Has your intention been over the last few years to loosen up a bit.
LC. Yeah.
TG. But the black hole is pulling you in, demanding that you get more detailed, more anal.
LC. [loud laughter] Yeah, yeah!
TG. This is like a fight between your good and bad angel: your anal angel and your let’s hang out and be more relaxed angel?
LC. Yeah. I haven’t got a grip on that more relaxed angel yet.
TG. Maybe you are not praying enough. When were you last at church? Apart from your dad’s funeral?
LC. Wow! A few years back when we had some amulets that we wanted to put in the door here and we took them to be blessed.
TG. You must have faith to want the amulets blessed.
LC. Yeah. Isel always wants me to go to church but… I do often go into churches, but to look at things.
TG. Me too, to look at paintings, sculptures or stained glass. But that doesn’t count. If we looked at this painting in a religious way would we see it as a hobgoblin, or as demonic?
LC. [Louie emits a part scream, part laugh] I am not sure. Recently an image has been stuck in my head. It is a Man Ray photograph of a woman holding an African mask. It has been stuck in my head for quite a while.
TG. I know the image. Noir et blanche, 1926.
LC. I think that is how I subconsciously started to frame objects.
TG. Could the African head be a nod to Man Ray?
LC. Maybe. Ah, yes, the reason I did this was because I was looking at this picture
TG. Is it a mutant? Is it demonic? Or none those things? Is it a formal issue?
LC. Mmmm. It is a formal issue because I really, really want to paint an object. I want to challenge myself to paint from light to shadow. I want to paint a scene where a guy is holding a light source – his smart phone. I had no reference for this so I had to invent it – and be anal about it.
TG. It’s an anal issue: perspective and light. While you have been working on this you have done nothing on the yellow monochrome canvas?
LC. It is growing in my mind. Usually, like these two, a picture is in my mind before I begin painting. And when I finish it, it is no more in my head. That is why I don’t sleep well when I am working – I can’t stop thinking about the painting. It’s hard to get away from it. That’s why when I finish a work I rest for about a week – just rest.
TG. You revert to normal human hours?
LC. Yeah. Reading, talking, stuff. But when I am painting, all I do is eat and paint and sleep. At this time, I go to sleep at about seven in the morning and wake up around 2.00 PM. I have coffee from 3.00 to 4.00 and then I start working at 5.00 or 6.00. [I meet with him at about 3.30 PM, on occasion I have to wait for him to get up]
TG. So, you are gearing up for the evening’s work now?
LC. Yes, it’s the last few days, so I need to push myself. I am hoping the next painting can be a bit looser.
TG. You can’t get looser on the current one or the small one. They are already fixed at 10 on the anal scale
LC. [laughter]
TG. You say you will finish this in three to four days. And then you will take a week off?
LC. Yes, I have been working on this for a month now. Twelve hours a day for thirty days.
TG. You have a deadline for this.
LC. I will be five days early for that.
TG. Are the other two paintings already located for an exhibition?
LC. This one, the small one, is supposedly part of a group show that Geraldine also contributed to for the children’s museum in Batangas. We have to submit one painting for them to sell and a percentage of it will be a donation for the museum. But since my father died I haven’t had any time to do it. However, I told them after I have done this big painting I will finish it, give it to them and they can sell it.
TG. You know what the big painting reminds me of? That early film of the trip to the moon.[2] The Moon has a face and rocket lands, plonk, in its eye.
LC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, George Méliès. I know it! A very early science fiction film
28.8.23
TG. You have finished the big painting and as always you are taking a break before starting the next one.
LC. Yeah.
TG. How long will this break be? What will you do during it?
LC. Maybe a week. Mainly sleeping, lying on the bed or the couch in my studio. Now my mind is starting to function again.
TG. What time in the morning was it when you finished the big painting?
LC. Around nine o’clock in the morning – after a very long session.
TG. When do you know a painting is finished? Is that difficult for you?
LC. It’s easy. But sometimes I pass on some details and stop.
TG. You reach the “Oh, Fuck it!” stage.
LC. [laughs] Yeah.
TG. Do you go back the next day and check it was OK?
LC. Yeah. And if it is not finished, I would go back and finish properly.
TG. How often does that happen?
LC. Most of the time I get it right the first time – including this time. I am sure this is finished.
TG. I like the way that in the end there are sort of tropical curtains to either side of the fruits. Were they always meant to look like curtains?
LC. It was after I had done the studies that I looked at them and thought “Oh, it looks like a frame or a curtain”.
Louie Cordero. The Choice, 2023 acrylic on canvas, 72” x 72”
TG. When you are in that in-between paintings stage you catch up on sleep. Do you also read or do things or just go numb – just stare at the plants in your garden?
LC. More like the latter. When I start getting into the process of making drawings and studies that’s when I look at books.
TG. Your book collection, does most of it come from Booksale?
LC. Yeah. Booksale – and a lot from Amazon.
TG. I ask because I am trying to make sense of your book collection. Is seems so varied, random even. I guess having been trained as a librarian I am quite anal about putting books together in typological groups.
LC. I know where everything is.
TG. What will you work on next? The monochrome yellow painting – which I realise is very much not a monochrome – they are hundreds of small white marks on it. As if you are tracing something out. It is impossible to photograph with my crappy new camera
LC. I think I am going to erase it and start again. It for a group show at Mo_Space. It’s about portraits. It is due in October, I think.
TG. Will it really be a portrait?
LC. Yes
TG. Of whom?
LC. Of me maybe, or maybe some artist.
TG. How seriously are you taking the show’s concept?
LC. [laughter] Not too seriously. I have a study in my mind. Maybe I will do a sketch later. Ink on paper in the sketchbook using a ball pen. The last three day I have been waking up around five in the morning and going to the market. Just roaming around in the market and buying some food. Every morning I want to go there. Normally when I go to another country, I visit their markets
TG. You like the liveliness of the market. So many of the old markets in UK have been closed – replaced with shopping malls
LC. The same here – replaced by an SM. That is the fight in Baguio to keep the old market. Stop it from being gentrified.
TG. What else do you like doing? Reading, going to markets. Movies?
LC. Sometimes. I really like music. When I lived in Cubao every week I down-loaded documentaries then watched them. Jeremy Gulab[3], Poklong Anading, Gary Ross-Pastrana and I used to swap USBs with movies on. Now I download movies maybe once a month. I usually watch documentaries rather than movies.
Cordero Studio at 10.10.23
10.10.23
LC. This is the painting for the portrait show.
@10.10.23
TG. Is it you?
LC. No, it’s not me.
TG. That looks like a photo-collage. Did you get that from the net?
@10.10.23
LC. No, I drew it. I just wanted to paint mundane and banal stuff. Objects like a toothpaste tube or a glass of water. Banal still-live stuff. And then I realised I wanted to paint a bathroom. I don’t know why. And then I thought, “Maybe this idea is quite funny for the portrait show – a portrait of a guy shaving his balls, after the origin of the world by Courbet.” [laughter] That will be the title.
TG. So this is rectal Courbet?
LC. Yeah. And then I want to paint the drips of water like a pattern that mimics the Memphis pattern design.
TG. Are you a big Memphis fan?
LC. Oh yes! Most of their materials were cheap materials but you appreciate how they look and you can really see them as furniture that can be made.
TG. I don’t think you will have many commissions from people wanting you to paint their portrait! [laughter]
@10.10.23
LC. I just want to have a fun painting. This is the first time I have painted a bathroom. I have not tried anything like this before.
TG. This is a one-off then?
LC. Let’s see. I want to create a painting that’s really funny and fun for me to do, but that is also technically quite challenging. I am going to shade everything, have perspective, all the different tonal values. It will be much more complex.
TG. How long have you been working on this?
LC. Two weeks. This is the drawing. [pointing]
LC. After making the drawing and scanning it I make what you could call a colour study on the computer. It has the basic colour and shades
TG. In reality you are detailing much more. This will get brighter and more dynamic as you progress?
LC. Yeah.
TG. And how many more weeks to finish it?
LC. By the end of this month – October. Three weeks’ time.
TG. I am surprised how finished or detailed the study already is. How long did it take to do the drawing? And how many different colour ways did you try on the computer?
LC. The drawing took maybe two days. On the computer it probably took 8 colour ways before I found one that I liked.
TG. When you sell the painting do you sell the drawing with it?
LC. No.
TG. Does anyone ever ask?
LC. Yes, but I say “no”. I keep it because it is a reference point for me. Sometimes I look at these drawings. But most of the time if there is a commission and they ask for the drawing or the study I say “no”.
TG. You have never had a commission where supplying a drawing was part of the contract?
LC. No. Usually if I have a commission in order to show the people that I have a plan, I give them a preliminary sketch. Before I used to start without a sketch and it took me a while to sort it out. The drawing is problem solving but even more it is time saving. The drawing and the colour study is something I can hold onto.
TG. We could describe this painting as a small brush painting.
LC. Mmm. Small for the details. Not size zero but number two brush.
TG. You lay the big flat areas in first with a larger brush
LC. And blend the colours methodically. I work like billboard-painters work.
TG. Just like James Rosenquist. Have you ever painted a billboard?
LC. I tried once, when I was in college. Huge ones for theatres and stuff.
TG. Was it OK?
LC. Oh yes.
TG. So you could have made a career of it.
LC. I was trained in college to do such things, for odd jobs and stuff. When I was in college I used to go to Retro avenue in Cubao and look at the billboards there – not as fine as Rosenquist but more like the Ghana billboard paintings.… Very crude paintings. In a way that is how I was influenced by Bill board paintings and comics.
TG. Not museum type art. You have always been interested in the jeepneys which are often hand-painted.
LC. Yes.
TG. Did you see the installation Ming Wong did in Venice in 2011 for the Singapore Biennale where he employed a Malaysian guy who used to paint movie posters to paint posters for his videos?
LC. I did! There is also the Indian Thai guy Navin Ravanchaikul who makes movie poster type paintings.
TG. They can be enormous!
LC. [laughter] Yes.
TG. You never wanted to do something that scale? I guess it would only make sense if it was commissioned.
LC. I think I am satisfied now with doing what you see here. A five by four painting
TG. The lines of grout between the tiles are incredibly straight. Did you use masking tape?
LC. I used this special thin masking tape I found on Lazada. When I saw it there, I just thought, “I can use this in a painting”. All these things get incorporated in my art. I want to put an elf in the toilet. He will be holding a telescope and looking at the earth. The rectal earth. [laughter]
TG. Was the elf in the original drawing? [looks at drawing] So he is! He is very small. I guess elves know their place. [laughter]
LC. Originally he wasn’t in the drawing. I realised after making it that there was something lacking. It isn’t finalised, won’t be till I paint it.
TG. It is a very generic toilet.
LC. I just took a picture of the toilet here.
TG. What did your mother think of paintings like this?
LC. My father thought my paintings were weird. For example: I started painting like this in my 4th year (early 2000). Before I graduated I, Gary and Alvin Zafra were already doing shows in Finale, thanks to Sir Chabet. And my father thought that because I was painting inside my small room in Malibon using encaustic wax and other toxic stuff that I was a drug addict, not an artist – because of all the fumes. One day he crashed into my room and asked me where the drugs were. [laughter] I was working through the night then too. I wasn’t communicating with other people in the family or sharing meals with them. I was just inside my room working and he thought because of the fumes that I was making shabu or meth or something.
“No, no,” I told him: “there are no drugs here, just paint.”
TG. At least he cared.
LC. And then afterwards they found my paintings so weird. My mum is just a teacher and my father is a welder. However, after I sold some work and started giving money back to the family they became more appreciative. Now my mum is used to it. She doesn’t blink anymore when she sees my work.
23.10.23
@23.10.23
TG. In the thirteen days since we last talked it seems to have become a darker painting.
LC. I think it will become darker still.
TG. The globe now looks very much the dark side of the Earth. [laughter] The sun is not shining on it for some reason.
LC. It took me a while to paint all the drips there – the greenish water. The elf has not arrived yet.
TG. I am disappointed, I was hoping he had arrived by now. Will he have a red hat like a pixie?
LC. I think he will just look like a small human. No hat.
TG. Well, it would be rude of him to wear a hat when he is indoors. [laughter]
LC. I am enjoying working on this painting even though it is quite tedious. It is tedious but nevertheless I am enjoying this process. This is the first time I have taken on this sort of subject matter.
TG. The first time you have painted someone looking out past his testicles?
LC. Yeah. [laughter]
TG. In terms of space, it is actually quite a realistic painting by your standards. Has it created possibilities for other paintings?
LC. Yeah, but I also want to be looser in a sense when I paint.
TG. It has taken an awful long time to paint, hasn’t it?
LC. Yeah, for this size I think it will take me a month to finish
TG. For one painting. If you paint every day. But if you have errands and stuff to do…
LC. Maybe it’s the tops with errands and so: a month. I do work 10-12 hours a day. And I cannot sleep until I finish.
TG. Therefore you haven’t had a good sleep for a month?
LC. Yeah, ah, actually no! Because yesterday my body was so exhausted that I slept the entire day.
TG. Twenty-four hours?
LC. Twenty-four hours. But normally I can’t sleep. I maybe sleep two or three hours a day. I feel terrible but I have to work. I try to reschedule my sleep but it doesn’t work because I am still thinking of the painting. But by yesterday my body had gotten so exhausted I could sleep all day.
TG. At least as a writer if you do wake in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea, or sentence, or metaphor. You can scribble it down on a sheet of paper beside the bed and go back to sleep. You can’t do that with a painting, can you? You have to get up and come to the studio…
LC. But I have a small notebook. I can jot things down too.
TG. Mind you, often, when you eventually wake up in the morning and look at those scribbles you think, “what is this rubbish?” [laughter]
LC. I need to blend all the colours in the background together. I need to clarify the light source – where the light is coming from.
TG. At the moment you have no solo show to plan for. You don’t feel it strange to just work on one painting alone?
LC. Actually, I have a solo show in Mo_Space October next year. I am excited about that as I will be doing sculptures. Maybe some paintings, but mostly sculptures.
TG. I like the tension in the painting between one point perspective and axonometric space. The tiles are axonometric but the body in one point perspective.
LC. I think when I put the elf in it will change everything a lot.
TG. Have you left it to the end because it will change the painting so dramatically?
LC. Yes, it is the icing on the cake.
TG. The icing on the cake, or the cherry on the icing? [laughter]
LC. In a painting I try to finish all the boring parts before I do the more exciting parts.
TG. Like leaving the best bit of the meal to the last bite?
LC. Yeah.
TG. What has been the most tedious bit?
LC. The water.
TG. The eighty-ninth drip of water. [laughter]
LC. There is a lot unfinished in the background. On the centre and the left. Three or four days’ hard painting. Then I am going to frame this.
TG. Do you normally frame your paintings?
LC. Sometimes – when I really like my paintings. This is the frame for it. And then I am going to paint it with many colours.
TG. What is the purpose of this frame? For fun?
LC. For me it is to help the painting be really bad.
TG. You mean it is another element in your assault on good taste.
LC. I will use automotive paint so it will be a bit glossy. Car paint holds better on wood than acrylic. I like the sheen of car paint.
TG. You want it to look a bit different from the painting?
LC. The painting will look matt compared to the frame’s sheen so less finished than the frame. I want that.
TG. At what point do you decide to add a frame? The start or the beginning?
LC. Middle. Most of the frames I have put on my paintings are painted too.
TG. A lot of the time now I presume you are just blending.
LC. Yeah. Because it is acrylic. Blending with oil is much easier. Acrylic has a harder, less fleshy surface.
TG. Is that a problem or an asset? Would it have been a very different painting if you had used oil paint?
LC. Definitely. It would have been quicker. I am very tempted to go back to oil. I haven’t used oil since 2005. But when I smell oil paint it makes me feel dizzy.
TG. Do you have an extractor in your studio to get rid of the fumes.
LC. I do. It would be OK. It is very hard to make acrylic look like oil paint. Something you do with one brush on oil takes four brushes with acrylic.
Louie Cordero. Portrait of a man shaving his balls (after L’origine du monde), 2023 acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48″
At the Portrait show, Part I, Mo_Space, 2023
11th April 2024
TG A long time has passed, five months, since we were last able to meet. Things have happened: your close friend Jeremy Gulab has died. There is a new painting on your easel, one nearly finished. Also the small painting that was in your studio last year is on an easel now, marked up with chalk lines as if you mean to finish it. How are you?
@11.4.24
LC. I’m good, a bit exhausted, it’s so hot! [the day after this the temperature in the shade at 3.00PM was just over 39 degrees centigrade]
TG. Was Jeremy very close to you? I was trying to think how to describe what he was. Could I call him an enabler? Someone who helped you make things and also gave emotional support.
LC. For me, and Nona or Kawayan, he was like my old brother. We were all close when we worked in Cubao. He was going to build me a new studio in Palawan where he had moved. He had nearly completed a studio for Nona.
TG. In the past when you were in Cubao did Jeremy apart from supplying materials get involved in the actual making
LC. Yes, he would advise me what materials to use, what tools, and so on. As you know in the Philippines it is the custom to remember someone 40 days after they died. On the fortieth day after Jeremy’s death I, Nina and Poklong went Palawan and spent time in his place there. Nona is talking of working in the studio Jeremy made there. It is really big, maybe five times the size of this studio – and there are two floors. Or maybe letting young artists use it. But, of course, that depends on what Jeremy’s daughters want to do with the space. There was so much stuff there – old furniture and so on. It was as if he had recreated the compound at Cubao. It’s a nice place, close to the beach, though I am not a beach person.
@11.4.24
TG. Is this painting on the left the only work you have made since the show at Mo Space?
LC. Yeah. It’s a commissioned painting.
TG. How many commissions do you do?
LC. If I am not too busy I can do one or two a year. What is good for me with a commission is that I can take it slow. Unlike an exhibition with its deadline always looming. If I do a commission I do a study first. That is the way to communicate with the person commissioning you. If after one or two studies he is not happy, then, fine! We are not communicating and I stop.
TG. This painting is not finished yet.
LC. Maybe I need a week or two to complete it. He wants all the seven senses.
TG. The five normal ones, the sense of your body in motion and the more magical, intuitive sense?
LC. Smell, hearing, touch, sight, taste, the sense of space when in motion and I think the sense of all the senses combined. He is a historian hence the skull and the saint with a chopper in his head. I can’t remember that saint’s name, sorry!
TG. Looking at this new painting it seems you still haven’t managed to loosen up as you wanted to.
LC. In a way these are all like miniatures. I sit down to paint a three-by-three foot painting. My earlier paintings were looser because they were larger and I had to stand up and move about to paint them. I was doing eight-foot wide paintings in Cubao.
Louie Cordero. The Omnibus, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”
TG. Tell me how did you feel about the painting of the man shaving his testicles when you showed it at Mo Space?
LC. I thought it was OK. [laughter]
TG. You didn’t mind being hung between a painting by Pow Martinez that was nearly as assertive as yours and a very understated painting by Alain Ballisi?
LC. I’m OK with that.
TG. You don’t get hung up about how your paintings are hung?
LC. Not really. There were thirty artists in that show. It was always going to be crowded.
TG Did you manage to sell it.
LC. Yes. I did not expect to sell that painting. I mean, a man shaving his balls!
TG. So, you have kept the wolf away from your door for a bit longer! [laughter]
LC. After this I will be making sculptures for a solo show at Mo Space in September. I am looking forward to that. I haven’t made sculptures for a while.
TG. You have a separate studio for sculpture. Will you need an assistant as you used to have in Cubao?
LC. Definitely. We are preparing to start next month. There will be a lot of carpentry. I am quite excited about that. Big sculptures. Made by bonding plywood together.
TG. Would you like to carve something really big, like a totem pole?
LC. Oh yes!
Louie Cordero in his studio 11.4.24
Footnotes: