By Michael Kinney
Story & Photos
With Tribe Called Quest playing in the background at his studio, it is easy for Dustin Caballero to get lost in the music. Even though the 37-year-old has eclectic taste and listens to other musicians and genres of music, when he really wants to buckle down and get to work on painting, he throws on a mix of Tribe songs and lets the New York City hip-hop group guide his Oklahoma-born hands.
Alone in his studio that he co-shares at Oklahoma City’s Ment Apparel (mentapparel.com/) in the Paseo Art District, Caballero immerses himself into the flow and rhythm from such classics as “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo,” “Buggin Out” and “Jazz (We’ve Got).” According to Caballero, the music reflects the frenetic almost freewheeling style that he approaches his art with.
“I have a lot of energy. It takes a lot for me to turn my brain off and get some sleep because I’m always in my head about an idea or there’s a song that I heard, and I remember that sample from the old version,” Caballero said. “I’m trying to find that. There are a lot of things that just ramble around in my brain. So yes, very, very energetic.”
One look at the walls in Ment or on his website (rubielart.com), and it’s easy to understand what Caballero means by energetic. Filled with bold colors (Teal is his favorite color) and frenzied, furious strokes, his abstract paintings often tell a story that even he can’t explain until he gets it onto the canvas.
Caballero said his inspiration comes from just everyday life including his books.
“We have all these books. There’s a bunch of books behind a painting that I have that I’ll just go back for maybe reference or just see what they were doing 15 years ago in advertising or a commercial that I thought was funny,” Caballero said. “Or if there’s a cool color or something. I feel like I collect colors from what I’m seeing, and then my brain just starts to put it together and there’s an idea. But it doesn’t get fleshed out until I start actually painting. I know the colors I want to do, and then I like boom. I think it starts.”
But Caballero also credits his humble and often rocky upbringing as a potential source for his art and resilience.
“There are definitely stories behind these things. I think it shaped me to be like, I’ve been through pretty much everything, so there’s not going to be anything that somebody could say, like ‘I don’t really like that painting’, or ‘I’m not feeling it,’ that’s going to hurt me. It shaped me to have tough skin which I think you need as an artist. So that was just built in naturally from moving around and stuff. So, when somebody has a negative reaction, it doesn’t compare to what I’ve been through. I’m going to keep doing it.”
Born in Oklahoma City, the son of a Mexican mother and Native American/Mexican father, who wasn’t in his life, Caballero moved around between Oklahoma and Texas. That doesn’t include one year in Florida which he described as random.
The Gypsy lifestyle, as he calls it, was born out of necessity as much as it was the search for better opportunities for a single mother with two kids.
“It’s just my mom. I think it was my mom just not wanting to be stuck in a place,” Caballero said. “My dad didn’t really treat her right, so it was like, let me get out and then let me just experience all these other things and go to these other places and just see what’s up. And sometimes it was just circumstance. It wasn’t really easy, but she made it happen, so we stuck with her. She’s like, I’m not going to leave y’all anywhere. We’re in this together.”
The constant movement saw Caballero attend 10 or 11 different schools in 12 years. Depending on the school district his family moved into, sometimes he would be one of the only people of color in the school while other times he was part of the majority.
It wasn’t until Caballero was in his late 20s that his family settled down in Norman, which is where he has been for the past 11 years. It’s by far the longest stretch he has been in one location in his life.
He picked up work as a graphic artist at Norman’s Top of the World but found it too constraining to his creativity. Even though he had doodled around with art since he was a kid, he was never really serious about it.
“Then I saw a documentary about Jean Michel Basquiat called Radiant Child. It was a really good documentary, and it looked like he was just trying to escape with his paintings because he had a rough life,” Caballero remembered. “I was like, man, does this work? So I started just painting. I just did sketches before charcoal and drawing. And then I just started going crazy with the acrylics, doing whatever I wanted to do. No rules. I didn’t go to school for it, so I didn’t know mediums and all these things.”
Even more than what he was creating, it was what he felt inside that swayed him to go all in on his artistic path.
“The feeling that I got after a painting, I couldn’t beat it,” Caballero said. “I had to keep doing this. It’s now a need. If I don’t do something creative for a day or two, you can tell I’m irritated. I didn’t know that about myself until I started working at the Top of the World and understanding that frustration of being constrained.”
Caballero was soon able to have his first public art showing at a gallery in Norman. He had no idea what to expect or if anyone would like his work.
But when he sold his first painting ever that night, it changed him forever going forward.
“I don’t know how to explain the feeling. It was a euphoria that I’ve never experienced before,” Caballero said. “It was something that just came out of my brain that I put down and it’s like here, and that’s very nerve-wracking that these are feelings that I have in this piece, and it took a long time to understand these are my feelings. When that happened, I didn’t believe it. I still don’t believe it. I have to question it sometimes. It is that imposter syndrome.”
Since then, Caballero’s need has not been diluted. Even as he currently works helping his mother at Loveless Shoes and Boots, the frustration of not being in the studio gets to him. He knows it’s a situation that will have to resolve itself soon as he looks to put all his time and effort into his art.
Because when Caballero gets in front of a 36×48 canvas, with his brush and teal paint by his side as a Tribe Called Quest plays loudly in his head, he knows that is where he belongs.
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