When Lao Lianben was just a young fine arts student, he was already fascinated with the concept of an artist’s atelier. For him, visiting one is like getting a grand and wild view of an artist’s creative process; stepping into one is like finding clues to an artist’s puzzling life, as if unlocking secrets to a long-forgotten mystery. And so he was inexorably smitten. He liked the palpable and raw energy seemingly radiating from an artist’s sanctuary, the odds and ends that the place prides itself with, and the smell of turpentine or paint wafting inside of it. But beyond those, Lao took comfort in the sense of belongingness a workshop provides him with.

Now that Lao has a studio of his own, he must be extremely happy. Lao’s workshop is reflective of his personal bias and aesthetic. Big and small potted cacti arranged on a wooden table and on a stone-filled pathway greet guests upon their arrival, while colossal canvases painted in grays and whites invite viewers in. Strewn on one table are the abstract artist’s paraphernalia and some new works—a black Moleskine sketchpad filled with muted abstracts in black, brushes, and small box-type canvases all caked and textured with modeling paste and washed with a solemn color palette.

One can get Lao’s artistic sensibilities from the get-go. As with his studio, Lao’s pieces lean towards the minimal and the quiet. He likes them that way. Always rendered using non-colors, his paintings feature a potent meditative quality and a freer expression—a disobedient scribble here and there, a thick, irregular concentration of impasto at one part, and  drips of paint at another. Riotous shapes and isolated forms also dominate his canvases. When combined, these rippling shapes create an element that represents some sort of reality—say a faceless man with his arms stretched like wings or a man bowing his head while sitting down.

Calm and stillness wash a viewer upon seeing them. His engulfs an onlooker to a solitary place, a world where peace reigns and silence is king. But what Lao’s opuses lack in vibrant colors he makes up for texture on his surfaces. Having said that, the artist takes it upon himself to let his audiences literally feel his opuses, allowing contact with his pieces’ weathered, gnarled, and prodding lines, gaps, and shapes by way of touch.

Some critics pigeonhole Lao’s works as Zen, but the artist refuses to be stereotyped. “They say my pieces are Zen paintings but then when I started reading about it, the more it confounded me. For me, it’s a matter of personal taste, he says.” “I just like works that are quiet, works that don’t bother you. I like blacks, whites, and grays—colors that don’t conform and are just there.”

Lao’s affinity with such pieces is also an offshoot of what his art professor told him way back in college: “If you paint, don’t tell everything. Leave some to the viewers.” Hence, the artist’s oeuvre doesn’t reveal much to his audiences, making sure, though unconsciously, that his viewers participate in a constant visual dialogue. Noticeably, the artist revels in the partially baring and the concealing of his elements, his subjects. He takes pleasure in bringing audiences to a realm where “everything is said and nothing is said” and into a portal where awakening or illumination is outwardly at hand.

The concept of illumination or satori (a Buddhist term for enlightenment) seemingly comes into play in Lao’s works. Knowing this, one would think that Lao’s Chinese roots have been influencing his pieces, but the artist says that he really can’t say since he feels very Filipino inside. He counters however, “That’s why painting is important to me because it’s where I try to find my identity. There was a time in high school that I feel like I wanted to belong. But nowadays, I just don’t care anymore.”

Art connoisseurs declare that Lao’s works are utterly profound and spiritual. In a sense, that is true because apparent in his anthologies is that never-ending intimation of finding one’s self and spirituality. Central to his artworks is a sense of uncovering that which cannot be fully discovered like absolute truth or the metaphysics of things.

But then again, one can also say that a Lao painting is not just about the exhilarating feeling of discovering. It is also about giving meaning to things and estimating concepts into imagery. The artist himself says that words inspire him. “For example, I like the word ‘obliteration.’ So I’d ask myself how that would look. I also like the word and the sound ‘ohm,’ and I like to see how that would translate into a canvas.”

Lao also says that he relies on instinct and intuition when creating a piece. The abstractionist regards that painting has no step-by-step recipe. There’s no exact formula in making art, he adds. “When you do abstract, you don’t deal with rationalization. When you feel like a work is already saying something you and it’s speaking to you, then it’s time to stop working on it. You get a feeling that it’s done,” he explains.

Nonetheless, Lao emphasizes that there’s nothing that could stop him from working because there’s no end to the road of discovery and learning. Lao says, “You have to work every day. My teacher said that if you have nothing to say, don’t paint at all because you’re just creating noise. But I don’t believe in that.” He continues, “In this business, there’s really no guarantee, that’s why I always tell my children that they live only once…so they should do what they want to do but always with the utmost passion. I think that’s the whole idea to living.”

At the end of the day, one may find Lao inside his reassuring atelier—working incessantly to fashion new-fangled and silent pieces, distilling his studio’s conspicuous energy as impetus, and in the silence, persisting to realize secrets to a long-standing mystery called life.