ZAMBOANGA CITY — Why does a man paint or sketch an artwork? Is it to grab and interpret either reality or fantasy and thus, rule over and suspend them? This is what probably happens to Bador Bandoy and the pedestrians who gather around him whenever he sketches fantastic figures and colors them at sidewalks in downtown Zamboanga City.
Aside from being a daily scenario here, Bandoy said his art is his source of livelihood. He likes to move around — one day he’s here, the next day he’s at a different “studio”.
He would not qualify as master artist, as there is a kind of flatness and crudeness in his pieces, somewhat child-like in quality, which is probably why they are interestingly innocent, catchy, and dramatic.
Using color pens and bond paper, he likes to paint imaginary mosques. He also paints humans displaying fantastic features, strange-looking, even mythic animals — dragons, sphinxes — even fishes, birds, and so forth.
He always carries with him folios of his works, each piece wedged in cellophane. He sells each copy for only PHP30 apiece. Often though, students “commission” him to draw pictures for them for their class assignment, and that’s how he gets to earn real-enough money.
You would also see a donation box, in case appreciative spectators like to donate a coin or two — a practice by street artists in art-crazy cities like London and Paris.
Prolific as he is, Bandoy, now 56, has fathered 10 children, most of them now grown-ups, though he has young children who depend on him.
One of them, he shared, already died. He and his housebound wife and children live in a suburban barangay, while some of his older children live independently in other places in Mindanao.
Both his parents are dead — his father is a Bisayan from Surigao, and his mother is a Muslim from Maguindanao. He was born and grew up in Jolo, virtually qualifying as a Tausug.
All his life, he said, he worked in odd jobs — as a boat crewman, garbage collector, jeepney conductor, watch-your-car boy. Sometime in the past, his interest was caught by the doodling and drawings made by street children — they are aplenty in Zamboanga — hanging around the city’s sidewalks.
He tried his hand, and since two years ago he has been “professionally” living as a street-side artist. Life is tough for many, but for Bandoy, grizzled, graying and going around in rubber slippers with a quiet mien about him, it is probably as colorful, wonderful and easy as he makes it — in his artworks. (Rey-Luis Banagudos/PNA)
