Meet Elito Circa, a Filipino artist who uses his own blood to create paintings
ELITO CIRCA – A Filipino artist is using his own blood to create paintings.
The 52-year-old artist from Nueva Ecija province is using his own blood taken from his veins to produce canvas paintings.
Growing up in a low-income family with limited access to painting equipment, Circa experimented with a variety of media, including tomatoes and plums. However, his love with utilizing blood started when he scraped himself as a small child.
Presently, he goes to the health clinic of their town to undergo extraction of his blood, usually in increments of 500 ml (17 oz). He does it once every three months. The blood is being stored in a cooler in his studio and will be used for his future projects.
“My artwork is very important to me because they come from me, it is from my own blood, my DNA is part of it… My philosophy is that life is circular and everything is a cycle, so (my blood) is a tool that serves as a reminder of where I came from,” he said according to Rappler.
Elito Circa has set his sights on a more ambitious project: to create the largest “blood painting” ever on a 100-meter (328 ft) canvas in 2023, breaking all previous records. This comes after painting a 122 × 244 cm (4 x 8 ft) mural illustrating the history of Pantabangan, the town where he was raised.
Meanwhile, human blood contains iron oxide, he explained, a pigment found in many traditional paints, and which occurs naturally in iron ore and common rust.
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