(upbeat music) - I look at the temperature overnight.

And if it's colder, that's gonna mean that I gotta come in here a little earlier because it's gonna take a little longer for this to rise.

I'm all about routines, making sure everything is done correctly, on time.

I'm all about perfecting the craft.

(upbeat music) Pandesal, this is a staple food for Filipinos, and their breakfast.

It's something that they have to smell in the morning.

They have to have with their coffee.

(upbeat music) When Spain came in, they introduced wheat to the Philippines.

So, what they were trying to do is mimic, like a brioche, and with the resources that they had in the Philippines, they came up with Pandesal.

(upbeat music) I had to keep this tradition going.

This bakery is a big staple to this community.

(upbeat music) This belonged to the people.

This belonged to the community.

Keeping the bakery alive, that was what was important to me.

And keeping the people happy with receiving what they're used to getting all the time.

(upbeat music) I carry this all the time because it helps me escape from the kitchen.

And I think, oh, I'm also an artist, so.

(laughs) This is my sketchbook, yet this is my recipe book on how I studied Rembrandt, how I studied Caravaggio, how I studied Bouguereau.

Ink drawings with a brush pen.

My son had a Batman phase.

So, I thought I was gonna change my career into illustrator.

And that I always loved the noir graphic novels in black and white, and the dramaticness of that.

This is my wife.

I think she was reading when I was painting her.

(upbeat music) Here's James Dean.

I actually started painting a Sargent portrait, and the underpainting looked so much like James Dean that I changed it into James Dean.

So, I met this guy through the bakery.

He's now my barber.

We're pretty good friends now.

I've always been intrigued with Michelangelo's sketches, and Leonardo's sketches, and how much time they put into studying.

It's their curiosity that made me curious to try that myself.

That process has always been interesting to me because that's where the artist kind of lives.

In the midst of learning how to paint, I was suggested to just paint from the masters by copying.

I've always been intrigued by Caravaggio.

Mostly because of his interesting life, his dramatic paintings, and his play with shadow, and how he brings light to an existence in his paintings, is what draws me into his work.

I feel like paintings have a little more substance when you look up what was going on around that artist's time when he was painting this.

I think I was just mostly in love with the design of this painting, and the challenge of bringing the characters to life.

This is me stepping back and asking myself, "Well, who are you as an artist?"

Before I learned how to paint, even faces and figures, I did a lot of graffiti.

And how can I merge the two worlds?

Because they're both what I love.

I wanted that classical forum to interact with the graffiti.

(upbeat music) It was mainly to express who I am as an artist.

I'm stepping out of trying to be like Caravaggio and trying to be more like myself.

(upbeat music) Because I still want to spray paint.

I still want to feel the cans, and warm them up, then spray on the canvas.

Yet, I love to paint.

I love to take the time, and have a small brush, and model the forum.

(upbeat music) I think doing everything at once right now, and making my two lives kind of mesh together, is making me create things that are more meaningful.

I like to think like Caravaggio.

He was on the run and he had barely any time to paint.

Yet, he would paint masterpieces while he's in hiding, just to get Rome's approval to come back to the city.

And I am painting whatever I can because I love to paint.

It's all just a pattern of what I love about art and creating.

And that's kind of what I bring to everything that I put my hands on.

That whatever I do will be art.

Whatever I paint, whatever I draw, whatever I nowadays bake, will be art before it leaves my studio, before it leaves my kitchen.

That's just who I am, that's just what I like to make, and that's what I wanna present to the world.

I'm an artist first, and I became a baker.

The challenge for me was to find my why.

Why do you bake?

It's not even about me anymore.

I think it's about the people, the customers, the community.

It's all about tradition.

It's all about family.

And, especially, the Filipino culture is all about giving.

It's all about sharing and that's a tradition in itself.

(upbeat music)