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DANNY CASTILLONES SILLADA is a Filipino surrealist painter, philosopher, poet, essayist, musician, and performance artist from Mindanao, Philippines. He is also a critic-writer on art and culture.

As a multi-media artist, Sillada took a 360-degree detour from his vocation to the priesthood to embrace his artistic calling in the art world. He has already received numerous citations and awards and to date, has already launched 12 one-man shows as a surrealist painter, whose art traces his multi-cultural roots in his hometown province in Mindanao.

Hailed by a Filipino author and art historian, Manuel Duldulao, as the foremost Filipino colorist in the country, his images are inherently sensual, sensitive, and teeming with vibrant colors.

His art, in general, according to the University of the Philippines professor and art critic Reuben Ramas Cañete, “is culled from manifold, eclectic sources, as diverse as his biographical experiences, and the polyglotality of the embedded culture of the Mindanaoan. His works evoke a general air of hyperspatiality studded with the more everyday visualizations of terrestrial environments, reminiscent of the surreal hyperspaces of Yves Tanguy, E.M. Escher, Reñe Magritte and Paul Delvaux.”

Described as a polymath and a modern “Renaissance Man”, from a research paper submitted to the University of Asia and the Pacific, “Sillada is the embodiment of a Filipino who defies the existing trend. His multi-faceted attribute in the humanities, as a Filipino Renaissance man, is identical with those of well-rounded historical figures during the Renaissance period in Europe.”

“He is a visual artist recognized in the Philippine art scene for his paintings and installation artworks, a literary writer who is into prose and poetry, a philosopher, whose writings are akin with existentialism, a first-rate performance artist, and also an art-critic.” (The Life & Works of Danny C. Sillada by Michael Marlowe Uy & Katrina Kalaw, September 2006).

As a philosopher, he is the epitome of the new generation of Filipino thinkers, a critic of culture and a philosopher of humanity, advocating on the social and moral responsibility in relation to the common and highest good of the global society.

As a musician, singer-composer-performer, he was acclaimed by a Filipino writer-columnist Juaniyo Arcellana as “a perfect example of art in a public space, part performance and walking innuendo, straight from the wilds of Mindanao…"

He composes ethnic songs, Hip Hop and avant-garde ethno-techno music, and has already launched an album “The Battle Within” in 2008, a techno music with ethnic roots and a Hip Hop single titled “Bulag” (I Am Blind), a political satire about his country. He also performs his music, poetry and live art performances at the alternative venues in Metro Manila.

In 2005, Sillada is one of the participants to the Philippine International Performance Art Festival (PIFAF) that was held in Manila on September 18-22, 2005 with one of his acclaimed solo performances “To Let the Blood Flow”.

Born on the 27th of April 1963, in Cateel, Davao Oriental, Philippines, Danilo “Danny” Castillones Sillada was cited as a gifted child in elementary school. He started painting and earning from his artworks at age 7 and, subsequently, received an “Artist of the Year Award” in Maryknoll High School of Cateel, his alma mater, in 1982, then run by the American Maryknoll Missionaries.

At 17, he entered the seminary to become a priest. He finished his BA Philosophy & Literature in 1986 at the Queen of Apostles College Seminary, Davao. He obtained his Bachelor in Sacred Theology and postgraduate studies in Pastoral Theology at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila (1987 to 1991).

In 1992, after serving his term as Assistant Prefect of Discipline and faculty member of San Carlos College Seminary in Guadalupe, Makati, he left his vocation shortly before his ordination to the priesthood, and pursued his Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business in Makati City, Philippines.

The following year, Sillada was hired in an HMO company as head of Marketing & Corporate Relations Office. In the last quarter of 1995, Sillada, then a young executive, resigned from his promising career in the corporate world to become a full-time painter.

In 2003, he received two “Pasidungog Centennial Awards” in the fields of literary and visual arts in his hometown in Davao Oriental, a centennial celebration that was attended by the president of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

ENTRANCE & EXIT

2006
Oil on Canvas
100 X 100 cm

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

2006
Oil on Canvas
100 X 100 cm

BEHIND THE MASK II

2006
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

THE PAWN

2006
Oil on Canvas
100 X 100 cm

HOLY UNION

2004
Oil on Canvas
100 X 75 cm

BIRTHING

2006
Oil on Canvas
100 X 75 cm

Breast of Life

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

Light at the End

2007
Oil on Canvas
100 X 75 cm

Messenger Of Peace (Sarimanok)

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

Finding Peace Inside

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

Essence & Existence

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

Tears Behind the Mask of Sarah (For Sarah Gaugler)

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

Risen

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

Movement of Time & Space

2007
Oil on Canvas
100 X 75 cm

Growth

2007
Oil on Canvas
100 X 75 cm

Behind the Mask II

2005 -2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm

The Taste of Freedom

2007
Oil on Canvas
100 X 75 cm

Hope Amid the Vanishing Trees

2007
Oil on Canvas
125 x 100 cm