Artist alone: Kiukok in person

s a tribute to the National Artist Ang Kiukok, who was laid to rest on Sunday at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the Life & Times is publishing a “Note on the Artist,” with permission from the author, writer Juan T. Gatbonton.  The piece is featured in the coffee table book, Kiukok: The Artist and His Works by Esperanza Bunag Gatbonton, published in October 1991.

Kiukok the man is mild-mannered, shy and soft-spoken.  Some people who have seen his work but are meeting him  for the first time afterward express their surprise that he should seem so alienated from our world. Tall, thin and angular, his face pinched and taut under a shock of white hair, he lives quietly in suburban Quezon City with his wife (like him a Chinese Filipino), two sons and two daughters, three dogs, an indeterminate number of cats and assorted flowering plants.