ARTIST LORIBELLE SPIROVSKI
Loribelle
Spirovski
Painter. Portraitist. Archibald Prize finalist. Represented by Arcadia Contemporary, LA. Francis Bacon, Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud. Paint-splattered floors and eyes with eternal power.
"The fact that marks on fabric can bring someone to tears is still a piece of genuine magic that will always be priceless."
Loribelle Spirovski was born in Manila in 1990 and emigrated to Sydney in 1999. She attended the College of Fine Arts from 2008, graduating in 2012 with a Bachelor in Art Education, originally planning to become a high school art teacher before realising that profession was not for her. She began painting initially as a kind of self-therapy, feeling directionless and wanting to actually learn how to paint — despite having attended art school, the curriculum had never taught painting technique. She created her first independent painting at the start of 2013. By 2014 she was a finalist in the Portia Geach Memorial Art Award. Since then she has been selected as a finalist in the prestigious Archibald Prize for three consecutive years, has had a solo show in New York, has a painting in the collection of guitarist Dave Navarro, and is represented by Arcadia Contemporary in LA, hanging next to some of her favourite contemporary painters.
This is something that changes on a weekly basis, but the top three boil down to Francis Bacon, Egon Schiele and Lucian Freud.
When I first encountered Bacon in my high school art class, I was scared of him: the distortion and raw, visceral imagery was very unsettling and seemed to trigger something primal. It wasn't until I graduated from art school and experienced my own personal entrapment and turmoil that his work began to resonate. I began a series called Memento Mori which explored depression and anxiety, and worked in my very small bedroom at my parents' house, so those works were small and full of familiar faces. The skull emerged from that series. My research into Bacon introduced me to ideas that seemed to embody my own thoughts and experiences, and my paintings began to reflect similar visual elements. Recently I have begun to depart from Bacon as a source, but what I have extrapolated from his practice is something I will always be grateful for. It ultimately helped me break out of my own personal and artistic chains, and find a voice.
From the vantage point of someone whose career has skyrocketed as a result of social media, the art world appears to be going through a transformation never before experienced. The mass availability and access to art is unparalleled. However, the actual art being produced, despite ranging across traditional and non-traditional mediums, is still expressing the same basic human message it has since cave paintings, and this is what really anchors me in an industry that runs on a largely capitalist framework.
A lot of people ask how to "succeed" or "break into" the art world, and this is a loaded question. The idea of "making it" in art is a 20th-century phenomenon, and can certainly kill any authenticity in an artist. It has never been easier to make money from images than it is today. With this comes obvious pitfalls in terms of quality, but this is a topic for academics to debate. What the 20th century taught us is that the value of art is certainly not intrinsic, nor any fixed aesthetic quality. The fact that marks on fabric can bring someone to tears is still a piece of genuine magic that will always be priceless.
Coming from a teaching background, I have to say that being contacted by teachers from the other side of the globe, and having them show me works created by their young students in a style inspired by my own work, is something I treasure above almost anything else.
"Many contemporary portraitists feel that timeless attraction towards the human face. I have been trying to take the notion of the face back to its most basic elements. Eyes have an eternal power that somehow manages to transcend time and culture."
Loribelle Spirovski · On portraiture- @paintguide — always fantastic to see what inspires other artists
- @giba_mazzo — amazing and often obscure films shared daily
- @thegreatwomenartists — a phenomenal platform for sharing female artists of the past and present
- @canvas.tube — one of the go-to art sharing profiles on Instagram
- @greatartinuglyrooms — exactly what the name says
- @painterspaintingpaintings — another great one for the paint-obsessed
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