Rarely does a love story become the composite tale of a painting, and much more int he series of thirteen works of oil in canvass by BUTCH PAYAWAL in his latest one-man exhibition entitned "The Dance of Life" at the Hiraya Gallery on Friday, November 16.

"The Dance of Life" is a memoir of a family life; a reaching out from the present moment into the future's threshold, a statement of a creed that love's pathway flows through the multiple strains of renewal and unbroken vow.

Payawal chose the art of ballroom dancing as the epxressive allegory for the dynamics of wedded bliss and child parenting. He delineates the orgy fo romance in the quick brushes and the sudden clutches of the partners' bodies in a theatrical fashion, and consistently melds the unlikely-ness of the moments in the tortuous masks on their faces. Life does not bar beauty and sourness from each other; instead, both form the musical pitches in life.

He further adds to the ongoing drama the alien sight of a kid's toys that hang precariously on the lims of his dancing duo. He implants the stressful sight and embellishes it in bright colors. A puzzle, the element of surprise is yet so infinitely fragile in a relationship which has not welded so perfectly.

Paints achieve the tonal quality of words inside Payawal's visual narrative. The swirling volumes of colors take on the deposits of the emotions being unveiled on the stance of his dancing duos. Enabled, he transforms each canvass into an invitation to a monologue.

That Payawal's works tell narratives replete with action and dialogue just like those in books and the live screens--lies in the retinue of his immersions in the arts of book illustration, book design and typography, and printmaking. His former job as an art/creative director of a multinational agency here and abroad added a spin to his dormant talent as a painter and intrepid composer of modern love stories.