A native of Mankayan, Benguet, Sabado is an artist not just from the Cordillera, but of the Cordillera.  From the time he turned professional in the beginning of the 1990s, he has devoted himself to expressing the culture and mystique of this storied region through his art, which has gone through different styles and mediums.  No wonder some of his symbolic motifs, such as "garden of life" and "sacred tree," have become quaintly familiar.  And although he has ventured into abstractions, he is no disciple or advocate of art for art's sake.  On the contrary, he is very much an activist for art that enshrines and extols the life and lore of the Cordillerans, as Pathways does.

His fourth solo exhibit at Hiraya Gallery since 1994, Pathways, which opens on February 16, is an eloquent manifestation of his continuing affection for his subject, as well as of his evolving artistic maturity.  It is made up of four elegantly crafted room dividers and six imaginatively rendered paintings (actually mixed media works on wood panels), plus a four-piece mural, also in mixed media.  The collection, according to Sabado himself, "is a blend of the indigenous with the contemporary, the material with the spiritual."  That the mural itself is entitled Pathways says much about the concept behind the exhibit.  As Sabado explains, the mural opens the door to his ancestral world, the world of the Cordillera's past, which is accessible to him through dreams and his "ancestral memory."