LIFE IN COLOUR
Moving to Australia and making friends through art, and making art through friends.
đź“Ť INNER WEST, SYDNEY
PROJECT: MAKING FRIENDS AND ART
Life in Colour is a journey of discovery. One man's trip of growth to the other side of the world making friends through creativity and wanting to give that creative confidence back to those who need it.
FRANCISCO REBELLO
Go to Australia. Go to meetups. Make freinds. Cook for them. Go camping with them. Go life drawing wiht them. Make Art. Fill your room with it. Share your art in 107 Redfern, and create the open space that you so dearly trust.
5 years of friends and
creativity in Australia
These artworks were my very first paintings with art somewhere in 107 Redfern with my first friend I made in Australia, interior designer Pauline Gallot, and her Argentinian architect housemate Romi Rodriguez. One graphic designer, one architect, and one interior designer. We've been friends ever since, and we've made a lot of art together..
Inspired by drawing life
I used to frequent various life drawings across Sydney's Inner West, especially with my friends. I treat life drawing differently than others. I refer back to my early art school classes, where the teachers would encourage you to draw in one line or in straight lines. And my aim is to craft the structure of the figure in light pen. I deliberately go to the art store and buy premium colored art paper and premium oil pastels or Posca pens. And my aim is to have something that I can stick on my room without it feeling like it's just a detailed drawing of a naked person. It has to be art in its own right. And therefore, some of the best life drawings are 20 seconds max, just quick, confident strokes. They're risky, but they come out really well.
Making art for my walls
Growing up, I never had my own bedroom. So when I moved out into sharehouses, I always cared to make my room an optimistic, safe space, coming home from the working corporate world. I used to fill it with positive words and song lyrics, but words became something of guilt when you didn't live up to them. So now in Sydney, my optimistic, motivational posters try to present optimism in a much more abstract way without literally saying it. So my room is always full of happiness.
Bringing my pinterest boards to paint and paper
By now, I have curated quite an excellent Pinterest board collection of high-quality illustrations, the best ones being the most minimized ones. I now use my free time to create paper artwork inspired by the modern, trendy illustrators that I follow on Pinterest.
Australia inspired ocean blues for me and my friends
My brother once asked me if you could choose one colour to paint Australia, what would you choose? And it's definitely blue, and specifically the blue looking at the ocean from Coogee Beach. And so blue as a representation for Australia became a beautiful thing. I used it for artwork on my walls, and I used it to send Christmas cards to all my friends around the world.
Taking my room to the streets of Sydney's Inner West
At some point, my room had accumulated so much art that it was overflowing off the walls. I wanted to take it down, but it felt wrong for it to only be framed and quietly seen. I loved the feeling of it being overwhelming, lots of art, loosely placed, stuck up with Blu-Tack as if I’d just come home from another life drawing session. That feeling became important to me, because it reflected how I actually live with art, not how art is usually presented.
I wanted to take that feeling and give it to the people of Redfern, at 107 Redfern, where I made my very first friend in Australia. I wanted creativity to feel like a safe, judgement-free space where you make friends. I deliberately wanted to invite everyone, not just a typical art crowd, but the old lady from my church, the Muslim hijab girls from my school research, people who might never go to a gallery. I didn’t want a stuffy exhibition, I wanted people to feel as comfortable as I feel with art.
From the moment you walked through the door, I wanted you to feel it. The aroma of my homemade chai, my mum’s samosas cooked and shared for free, no artwork for sale. My Sri Lankan friend Leon DJ’d, and my friend Pauline helped me think through the interior design, especially the layout of the chairs, pushing them off the walls to encourage people to sit, stay, and talk. It was about warmth, openness, and removing any pressure around art.
In a side room, I recreated my own bedroom as an interactive piece. I covered the walls with scrappier artworks, laid out tables, brought boxes of art materials, paper, pens, and invited people to draw whatever they wanted. The idea was simple: make something for yourself, because it makes you happy, and stick it on the wall. So many people told me afterwards they went home and kept making art, feeling more confident. That’s always been my ethos. Art isn’t expensive, stuffy, or locked in white museums. Art lives in your grandma’s cooking and your child’s play.