Imagine, now, this  artist: average height, aging, short sparse gray hair, gentle eyes undimmed by arduous years sweating it out as art director of an ad agency; and, by the enduring joyous years as huntsman in the Cordillera,  spending time as brother to the Dumagat braves whose homes are there. Now retired. He’s the artist Sonny Yniguez, looking not like an artist, but paints — controversial? Uncomfortable? — handling oils like they were watercolors.

Imagine him therefore the growing boy jolly in his boy games instinctively preferring toy guns, slingshots to playing with other boys, so a loner; making up Cowboys-and-Indians war games with his air rifle, in gardens, backyards lush with trees and wild bushes letting his unbridled imagination rove where it pleased. Ocassionally taking potshots at birds, frogs, stray cats, even dogs.

Always our forests enchanted him, their mysteries, denizens, variegated colors of nature. His reading fare for an artistically bent boy — it was conjunct with his boyhood loves — the exotic very imaginative Komiks illustrations of the great Coching; these opened his eyes to drawing, learning its form, refinements subtleties, importance. They propelled him to draw endlessly, on reams and reams of paper. The firm foundation of art is drawing, he discovered.

Study he did: at the U.E. School of Fine Arts, to learn the adornment and use of colors. He continued painting but couldn’t live off it. So he joined advertising. 

Yniguez is the rare breed of artist; in him are wedded harmoniously: seasoned huntsman, gun buff, biker, motorcyclist, bow-and-arrow enthusiast, deepsea diving. He has creative hands, can turn out a duck out of a piece of wood, or repair a gun. He’s also a dead shot. But art remains his insatiable mistress.

For her, he disposed himself of his most precious  possessions — the hunting instinct, motorcycling, etc.

He has now totally subjected himself to art. Defines the beautiful as “the promise of happiness”: his target aim. His excellent drawings he conceals in his paintings. They are in his “Secret Birds,” an earlier series. Also in the series of hunting albums, not shown here. What is shown here is a picture or two of his new series, biblical hunting scenes. And the “Crucifixion” paintings (controversial? uncomfortable? To see?) His crucifixions isn’t of The Christ but of Everyman, the artist, himself. His crucifixions are reminiscent of The Y-Symbol in our flag. His crucifixions are not a religious experience or spiritual experience that uplifts. The strength of the original Christ’s crucifixion lies in its redemptive power, its  redemptive force.  But then all crucifixions are take-offs from the First one.

Be that as it may, his paintings call our attention to their finest craftsmanship, their hidden drawings boosting his mastership, the colors applied wondrous, lending us the impression he uses colors to bring forth their individual beauties.

What kind of artist is Yniguez? Let’s play a game.
Mannerism: the ideal of virtuosity for its own sake. Concomitant preoccupation with the exotic, confusing, and dissident art. An artist of mannerisms?

Magic Realism: related to surrealism, translated everyday experiences into disturbing images by curious juxtaposition of sharply painted elements.

Metaphysical art, seen as bridge between certain forms in romantic painting and surrealism, creating haunting images with dreamlike fusion of reality and unreality.

Choose.

Yniguez’ art can be any one of the three or combination of any two,  or  all three together.

His colors reflect his personality—the atmosphere painter that he is. For his vision is his imagination laid bare, and that’s where his everything lies. A painting is painted or it isn’t. He’s the breath of fresh air in a suffocating art scenario.

He’s no follower of any school. He’s an artist possessed by his art!