His subjects are diverse: Things, events, experiences that would make an impact on him or some playfulness.

A normal scene in the art market goes like this: someone sees a beautiful artwork from a friend’s house, then would like to have a similar one in his home, and calls the artist and commission a work. The artist, then, would be compelled to do the artwork with some modifications.

An example is one beautiful painting of a flower vendor that one would normally see in most homes in the Philippines: using strong colors, with modifications on the flower species, clothes and sometimes holding a child. So, if you have seen one, and you’ll see another one, even without looking at the signature, you can easily identify the artist. Then, when this artist becomes old, one of the children or someone else will try to do an almost similar style with some modifications.

However, some paintings are done to declutter the mind of a successful, busy person. Painting relaxes the mind of politician, actor, athlete Richard Gomez from all the chaos of work and people. He usually paints early in the morning when people are still asleep or at night when everything is already quiet.

His subjects are diverse: Things, events, experiences that would make an impact on him or some playfulness.

The recent Amazon fires bothered him — it is so beautiful and the earth’s biggest source of oxygen, and yet people burn the forests for business interests.

So he took up his brushes and created his Amazon Burning Series, exhibited at the recently concluded ManilArt 2019.

In July 2017, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake hit Leyte, and it was reported that Ormoc, where he is presently the mayor, sustained the heaviest damage. Hundreds of houses were destroyed.

He launched his first one-man painting exhibit entitled Surface in Pinto Gallery in Antipolo on December 2017, which included all his earlier works, and a series on the earthquake in Ormoc, as well as the 2013 Super Typhoon Yolanda and the 2017 floods of Urduja Eastern Samar and Vinta, Mindanao.

The sale of the paintings was used to build a playground for the children of Ormoc.

Happy places also inspired his works. When he visited Siargao, he was very impressed by its blue, clear waters, with corals visible from above the waters. Most of his blue paintings are inspired by Siargao.

The series was exhibited on his second one-man exhibit on September 2018, also in Pinto Gallery, entitled When Evening Comes.

It also included his abstract paintings on Ormoc City’s night sky.

And lastly, the most controversial of all his paintings, exhibited also in the last ManilArt 2019, shows manly power, his playfulness, usually referred to as the “Ooooohhhh” painting in most articles.

Its real title is Salbahis Nga Pikoy (Naughty Bird), a huge impression of the male organ in climax!

The organ is colored bright yellow in a black background, and just like most of his paintings, he used a palette knife instead of a brush. For Gomez, it is about empowerment, lust and self-pleasure!

He thinks not all Filipinos are conservative when it comes to the arts. This is not the first time he has done it: some are colored red, some in blue all against a black background.

He began to appreciate art in the 80s when he started earning from his acting career, and has bought a good collection from local artists.

When he studied at the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communications in the 90s, he started photography. Then, he became interested with painting.

He is self-taught. He loves going to museums in his travels and had read books on paintings and painters.

He is a big fan of abstract works of Jackson Pollock, Alfonso Ossorio, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder and Joan Miró. He has seen a lot of their works in galleries and museums.

In his paintings, he likes playing with colors and mixing them.

As he said, “I don’t paint to sell, I paint because I enjoy doing it!”

I met him in the 80s, a true description of a good-looking Filipino: tall, dark and handsome. And he was moneyed, too, as he was already a very popular actor!

He enrolled in my class, Geology, part of the requirement for all university students as part of their General Education (GE) subject.

Since it was a GE subject, it was a big class, about a hundred students, and was held in an auditorium of the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geology.

On the first day, I noticed that instead of about a hundred students, there were about 150 tudents including some administrative staff of our institute and some staff of other nearby colleges.

So, after distributing the class cards, and the students filling it out and returning to me, I told the class: “We will not have any lectures today, we will start on our next meeting. But before you go, I have an announcement. Class, Richard Gomez is your classmate!!!”

Girls screamed, everyone clapped and there was a lot of laughter! And Richard, gentlemanly, stood up, smiled and waved to everyone! And there were more clappings and screamings! There were more kilig moments throughout the whole semester!