The making of an artist, a creative genius and his masterpiece, “Letras y Figuras,” a compilation of articles and papers of Dr. Jaime “Jimmy” Laya on culture and the arts, were written at various times and on various occasions starting from the early 1980s up to the present.

It had the common people feeling nostalgic for their past and enthusiastic for the future, a mix of art, history, and mystery that kept the readers on the edge of their seats.

But the tragedy of our time is that Filipinos have not developed a natural liking for reading. Spanning over a hundred years, it’s been reading that has broken boundaries and challenged perceptions. Some have inspired creative revolutions of new ideas, a vital way of sharing age-old information, knowledge and wisdom. Reading is not only good for gaining knowledge and fostering education, it is beneficial to our health and well-being, to fit into society.

Reading for your mind is like exercise for your body. For not developing a natural liking for reading, Filipinos have failed to read the best classics of our time. Failing to read “Letras y Figuras” of Laya, they also fail to appreciate so many good things in life.

“A creative mind can flourish and can blossom only in an atmosphere of a peaceful and quiet home where harmony and love abide, where parents serve as models of discipline, of honesty, of moral integrity, kindness, gentleness and refinement of conduct . . . where parents teach and educate their children.”

Jimmy Laya attributes his storytelling gene to his forebears. “My father never forgot the folk tales that his father told him. He retold them to me as a small boy, watched my reactions, made adjustments to my liking, and eventually published them in a children’s book.” His mother was not a storyteller, but she was a historian and author of a Tagalog-English vocabulary.

He said, “The way one writes is affected by what one reads, and between my father’s literature and my mother’s history books, I had plenty to read — Nick Joaquin, the range of authors from Charles Dickens to Washington Irving, Percy Hill and Walter Robb on Spanish Philippines (which I read and reread), D.H. Lawrence (which I read and reread too), etc. I also had the good fortune of having great English teachers — I remember Miss Pacheco who taught second-year English at Arellano High School, who required numerous theme papers and corrected them mercilessly.”

That was how Dr. Laya developed into an artist, a creative genius, and the iconic creator of the incomparable contemporary classic of our time, “Letras y Figuras,” the only one of its kind in the world, “a type of Philippine painting that shows scenes of everyday life, where people are painted such as to spell out the letters of a name. Letters and numbers, the qualitative and the quantitative artists and managers—together they work to achieve common goals.”

Jimmy Laya’s creative mind started to develop and flourish at home with creative parents and was sustained by the school that provided students with a superior teaching staff that utilized the creative approach to the development of the hidden potentialities and capabilities of the young students. For such superior teaching can instigate in the young untapped creative mind a strong desire and insatiable curiosity to learn more. It is a creative approach that can induce originality, responsiveness, and recognition of the limitless powers of the creative mind.

“Letras y Figuras” is a peaceful and quiet home, a university with a superior teaching staff that can develop a creative mind; it is Dr. Laya’s passion for excellence, and a collection of his masterpieces, all of which are national treasures.

On Thursday, 3 October, you will get your first taste of one of Dr. Laya’s finest articles, “Forever May,” on the love and paintings of Fernando Amorsolo, and the conquering dominance of Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium.”

(To be continued)