As the sun went down on a quiet Friday afternoon, Brazilian-born, Brisbane-based artist Thicia Luiza started a conversation. With Lady Sings the Blues by Billie Holiday playing in the background, a menagerie of strangers began to form upon a bed of warm autumn colours, and Billie & her Friends was born. Describing her process as similar to meeting new friends, Luiza lets the characters create themselves, each meeting as individual as the figure that emerges from her feather dip pen. Some wrinkle their whiskers, others blink wide open eyes. “While drawing them we talk, we smile at each other and say hello”, says the artist, though in this case there were some notable gatecrashers. “I met some characters during the painting process who hadn’t been invited to the drawing table”, she explains, but found that, in the end, the collective made sense as a group. Each new friend interlaps, piled one upon the other as they mill about the page. Interlopers are an occupational hazard when it comes to Luiza’s approach to artmaking, which precludes plans or sketches in favour of engaging personally with her subjects. But this is the price of total artistic freedom: “I like to see it as the most pure example of freedom with my creative self”.
Above: Thicia Luiza, Billie & her Friends, 2024. Acrylic, watercolour, coloured charcoal and ink on canvas, 82 x 82cm. $1,800. Courtesy: the artist.