Without diversity, art—much like life—is boring.

The Brut Collective—a group of brilliant and passionate artists composed of Reb Belleza, David Kaufman, Sandino Martin, and Ron Lopez Davis—is a great example of diversity in art. As a group, they have to work together on a unifying theme to showcase at an exhibit, but somehow each of their individual and signature creative style still shine through.

How they came together as The Brut Collective was a series of fortunate events. Reb credits his wife, Vale (Valerene dela Riva), for kicking things off.

“My wife one day said, ‘Why don’t you have a group?’ Because I had a group before with four other artists or three. So, that was a thought,” Reb said. Reb and Ron would see each other at art shows and auctions from time to time until both of them staged a show at the same time.

“I went and saw Ron’s show with the late Carlos Celdran at Archivo, and I thought, and my wife told me, that maybe I can work with Ron at first like a duo,” he shared.

The Brut Collective: Reb Belleza, Ron Lopez Davis, David Kaufman, and Sandino Martin

“I went and saw Ron’s show with the late Carlos Celdran at Archivo, and I thought, and my wife told me, that maybe I can work with Ron at first like a duo,” he shared.

Reb saw David eating at a restaurant out of the blue, and when they talked, David invited Reb to his first show at the Super Duper Gallery.

“It didn’t feel like we were long-lost friends; it was just like we were connected again. I really loved and I was blown away by the output of his art… so I decided, okay, maybe he is the third person,” Reb added.

Coincidentally, when Reb was curating a show for the White Room Gallery featuring actors and actresses who paint and do art, his wife told him that actor Sandino Martin sculpts. 

“I told these three guys one day, ‘Let’s meet up. Let’s talk about a group,’” Reb said. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

The Brut Collective comes from Reb’s fascination with outsider art or brut art (“raw art”).

“[It’s art] that’s not really academic. There’s more freedom to decide on what to do. It just gelled. I called and asked Jia Estrella of J Studio, and asked her if there’s a possibility for just artists to have a brut collective show, and she agreed. That was last year. We’re celebrating our second year at J-Studio again this July,” Reb narrated. The working title of the celebration is Exhibit 2.

Spontaneous combustion

Reb called The Brut Collective’s diverse offering and group chemistry “spontaneous combustion.”

“It was spontaneous combustion because we really didn’t know what the other was doing. I had no clue what Sandino was going to show because what I saw was so different. David was also going on a walk in life, and he also showed something different from what I saw the first time. And then Ron, of course, I wasn’t really familiar,” he said, amused.

When he saw all of their artworks at the exhibit as a collective, Reb was blown away.

“Oh my God! It’s really outsider art. We may appear like we don’t care, but we really do. When all these artworks were ingressed and put up on the walls, they just made real good sense,” he continued.

Ron interjected in the conversation and shared his thoughts about the first time they all worked together.

“We were quite pleasantly surprised by this. When we all got together and we put on the show, the reception was so good,” Ron started.

“Our styles are so different. So whatever we learned, whatever influenced us artistically, or what we considered beautiful or interesting to apply to our paper or into our material, definitely shows. And then people were quite… they seemed entertained by the show themselves. We were quite different. But in the idea to present yourself as creatives and as a group, was [and] is the singular thing. As creatives, we're all different. And even if you gave us a theme, it would be so diverse. We just take it to the next level. Every time you move up the stairs, you go up another step. You know, it's not this kind of a monotonous drive. We're always looking for change, I think,” he thoughtfully explained.

Individual styles

Four different people. Four different backgrounds. Four different styles in art.

Reb, David, Ron, and Sandino work in unison, but their artistic expressions differ in a way that sums up how they grew up, what they’ve learned, and what they continue to experience in life.

Reb studied at La Salle Green Hills High School and pursued Visual Communications at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in 1987. In 1989, he left the country to study at Santa Monica College in California, USA. He also cross-enrolled at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to study art history. But then he felt homesick and re-enrolled at the UP College of Fine Arts for Studio Arts.

Discussing his style, Reb shared that he did a lot of portraits for relatives.

“I was following the career of a teacher and a mentor of mine, Popo San Pascual, very closely until I found my own identity. I learned a lot of color from him. I learned my color palette is still the same as his. Nowadays, I think we have different color palettes,” he shared.

Reb Belleza

Reb Belleza's "Paris"

Ron, on the other hand, comes from way out in left field: a culinary background.

“I’m a chef by original profession, and I went to the California Culinary Academy. But I’ve always been in the arts. My mom always pushed for me to learn about painting and drawing. She used to teach jazz and ballet when we were growing up, so I was always surrounded by the arts. I also used to be a photographer and used to do photojournalistic essays,” Ron said.

In terms of his style as an artist, he is quite set already.

“Usually, I'm a figurative abstractionist. But I also use a lot of shapes and forms of letters and numbers. You know, they have a vibration or sound in your head. Let's say if I put an ‘E’ on the canvas, you will say ‘E’ in your head. Or you'll try to put some things around, right? Numbers also have a sound or a vibration. I try to use colors that I like, using the heat signatures of colors to express emotion. You know, sometimes a red-red or a light blue or something like purple, you know, those that drive the emotions of what I put down on a canvas. And usually, you can pick out images in particular, or letters, or shapes, or sounds in the canvas. But usually, I prefer it if people look at the whole thing as an object and how it will affect them. That's basically my style, and my colors are usually very California—warm, bright, and light. And even if it gets dark, I’m just using the hotter colors that will bring those out. It depends. Sometimes, I make commentaries on architecture, distance, figures, or emotions,” he generously shared.

 Ron Lopez Davis

Ron Lopez Davis' "Marin County, CA," oil paint, charcoal on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Then comes David, who confessed that he has not been formally trained in the arts. However, as a child who found every reason to get out of classes just wanting to do his own thing, he would find himself in the library and spend a lot of his time looking at picture books, specifically art books.

“So even from an early age, like maybe eight years old to 13 years old, I was already familiar with all the artists. I mean, I was already drawing the Picassos and the Pollocks. People always say first, you have to follow the masters. Then you can innovate. At eight years old, I was following the masters. Even without art school, I was self-learning. I was like homeschooling myself even before the concept existed. I was homeschooling myself on art because I didn't want to learn Tagalog. I didn't want to learn history. I didn't want to learn math. I wanted things that, you know, I was inclined to,” David explained. He also credits his mom for her interest in the arts.

“My mom is a designer. She loves to design jewelry and clothes, and all of that. So maybe that was inside me genetically,” he noted. When his parents separated when he turned 12, he had to fly frequently just to see his mom, and it took him to places like Hong Kong, England, and Switzerland, giving him exposure to architecture and the arts. Still, when he grew up, he took Development Economics at the University of Oxford.

“I cannot take up the arts because, you know, my parents would never agree,” he laughed. He went on to narrate his interests in fashion, painting to release tension, doing his essays, and partying in London.

“Even though I was in Oxford, I wasn’t really an academic. I’m like an accidental academic. I’m really more of a madman. It’s hard to describe my character, but I’m really a person who loves a little bit of chaos. I thrive in chaos,” he declared.

David Kaufman

Rounding up The Brut Collective is the youngest of the group, the 33-year-old Sandino. The actor shared he’s a product of humble beginnings from a public school in Novaliches. He’s a visual artist who calls his work sculpture on canvas and experiments with mixed media.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a builder. I like to build from scraps, like scrap wood. I’m also fascinated with people, and so I have action figures to create stories with. I’m a loner. I don’t play with friends. I like being alone. I have this own world with me,” Sandino began.

“When I was in high school, I was very particular about certain materials. So whenever I joined competitions like poster-making contests, or things like that, everything is so embossed already. Everything is so 3D. When I was a kid, I was a very imaginative boy,” he continued.

Sandino also became fascinated with photography, which led him to join a journalism group in high school, and he learned the basics and the theories as well as technical stuff like being conscious of the foreground or background. His interest in the arts eventually led him to take up Theater Arts at UP Diliman. Though he considered Journalism first, Fine Arts, and Linguistics.

“During the time that I was in UP, I was [still] very fascinated with materials. I was thriving in set design, with props-making and things like that. And then the professor would just ask me, ‘Can you make like a prop of this kind?’ especially if the play is not really, what do you call it, realistic. Everything's so imaginative. I thrive in those kinds of things. I was an actor for a very long time. I think I started acting professionally when I was 18 for a play in Makati, ‘Spring Awakening.’ And then I forgot about art and focused on photography,” the actor narrated. He would win photography contests with just his point-and-shoot digital camera.

“During the pandemic, everything was very still and very slow. I started producing art, so that was my start when it comes to the arts. I started ordering big canvases because my first entry of art is embossed art, or like a three-dimensional art, moving forward. I started producing art, which is in canvas or sculpture on canvas—that's what I call it. When I joined this collective, I really wanted to make three-dimensional art,” he revealed.

His style is a mix of sculpture and painting. “My main interest was really sculptures, and then I went to painting. So now that I'm [here], my materials that I'm using as art are resin and stainless steel. I like using technology as a tool, but I'm thinking of taking up pottery this year. I like learning stuff. I’m welding and I want to mix the materials of earth and something so hard like steel,” Sandino explained.

“I like juxtaposing materials as a medium, and I'm only focusing on two materials whenever I do something. It's just this and this, and then let's see what will happen. I call my art modern. It’s very sleek and streamlined,” he summed up his work.

Sandino Martin

Their individual sense of art, style, and aesthetic wrapped up nicely together as The Brut Collective. They also put something together as a group in the recent Art Fair, which gave Ron important realizations, especially after the warm and positive response they received.

“It kind of proved to be the trajectory of what was possible for us and also the direction. That people found what we were doing important enough to be shown because that’s a forum that goes beyond the local market or beyond the people who just normally go to the regular galleries,” Ron said, adding that there are many people who went to the event and posted a lot about their works.

“There's a world that we're coming from, and there's a new world that's coming up. There's a synergy that's coming together for what people are finding beautiful, what they find on the objects they find that draw their eye. It's a nice synergy that's starting to happen. It was nice to see all the old people, the regular guys, but the younger people coming up and also being exposed to what we were exposed to, and us being exposed to them. So that's what they're seeing, what's important, what's beautiful, and what they deem as something artistically worthy for them. I found it really invigorating,” Ron concluded, beautifully and meaningfully encapsulating the experience of working together as The Brut Collective with an audience and art enthusiasts ready to embrace their masterpieces. 

Photos courtesy of The Brut Collective