Homme 17

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Born in 1990 to a Filipino mother and Yugoslav father, artistic creation has always been my escape and fortitude against the personal challenges I experienced as a migrant, adapting to life in Australia – a vast land drenched in colour, and the murmurings of something primordial. Drawing inspiration from artists as varied as Francis Bacon, with his characteristically claustrophobic spatial relationships between figures and their surrounds, David Lynch’s dreamlike surrealism, and Olivier Messiaen’s static musical tones, my own inner conflicts were perhaps the earliest and most formative influences on my art - I paint from the interior to recalibrate, to defragment and to liberate. In my practice I have found that portraiture enables me to reflect through the sitter, who becomes a conduit for both their own anxieties, as well as mine. My practice is an attempt to externalise internal conflict, creating a juxtaposition of movement and stillness that forms an unsettling effect, evoking a surreal and dreamlike quality. It is in this dreamlike place that the spectre of mortality emerges, and though my art is often considered ‘dark,’ I believe it is ultimately redemptive as it lays bare an emotional truth.