A Perth-raised surrealist on intuition, discipline, and finishing a painting
Micca, Good Girl?;, Oil on Wood, 2024, 105x76cm,
Micca is a self-taught oil painter born and raised in Perth, Western Australia, who moved to Melbourne in 2022. Drawn to art her whole life, she remembers being excited about drawing as early as age four. She has always found deep satisfaction in learning to draw new objects and in discovering techniques that help her express what she imagines. At sixteen, she tried oil paint for the first time and fell in love with its richness and depth.
Brigitte:
How would you say that your childhood and living in Melbourne has shaped your work?
Micca:
I think it's a really nice place. But I don't feel like it challenges me enough, in a way. It feels like life is too easy, especially in my career and my general life. I feel like here, in America, there is more pushback and different opportunities to grow. I don’t think Melbourne itself has influenced me a lot, but I have a lot of influences from childhood. And Perth, where I grew up and spent most of my upbringing and childhood. I think that was more formative for me. Um, I think it has its own magic because it's such an isolated place that it's given me a lot of room to explore. I guess there are a few factors, actually, throughout my life, that have allowed me to explore my own and find my own identity, my own identity. It travels a lot into my work as well, because I was never really forced to “be” anything, and it just allowed me to be who I was. I wouldn't really say I'm influenced much by Australian culture itself, just because I think so much of my world is more internal, and I grew up in an Asian household. I don't necessarily subscribe to a lot of typical Australian things. Also, in Australia, I have a small circle of friends and we are all super close, and we just stick to that. I'd rather have a close group of friends and a small circle, and I’ve never really felt the need to assimilate to something that doesn't feel authentic to me. I also think I'm someone that likes to be alone. I think sometimes I'm sort of caught up in my mind, and I try to balance that.
Micca, for you ?
Brigitte:
What would you say are some of the biggest forms of inspiration that motivate your art in your craft?
Micca:
Okay, I have a few answers to this. So I watched Spirited Away when I was really young. When I was four. And I remember watching it and being so deeply fascinated by the movie. It’s a cool memory of mine. To this day, it's my favorite movie, and I think that kind of allowed me, from a really early age, to know that art didn't have to be anything logical. Like art could literally just be whatever I wanted it to be. The movie really set that core value in my mind, that there is no limitation to art and I can be free to invent things and create things and mix things together, and it doesn't need to make sense, and it doesn't need to subscribe to logic and reasoning at all. Because Spirited Away is such a strange, random movie. And I just remember being so fascinated by it. So that movie, and some of Hayao Miyazaki's other movies, influenced me a lot with my creativity. He's probably my earliest influence. And then I remember in high school art class, we had to analyze one of Mark Ryden's paintings. He's an incredible surrealist artist, and his work was my introduction to surrealism. I didn't know surrealism existed before that. I remember coming across him and realizing that I could mix cartoon, whimsy and fantasy with realism, and make a completely different world. And as soon as I saw his work, I knew at that moment I wanted to be a surrealist painter. It's like you create your own little world, and you blend these different genres and boundaries of art that shouldn't even really exist in the first place. And I think as a child, it scratched the itch that I had for anything that is out of the ordinary or pushes a boundary or is paradoxical in any way. Then I realized my passion for combining the technicality of realism, and the fine details of realism, with creativity. I love anything and everything creative.
Brigitte:
What would you say is your favorite artwork?
Micca:
I love the tiger painting. I think that painting discusses a lot about this sense of feeling shy and growing up as a really shy girl, and how that impacted a lot about me and how it affected my relationships with people. And even though I feel like I've grown into a very confident person… You know, there is that personal development of growing into a confident, capable woman, which I feel is what most people see from the outside. But it's like I've been able to create armor for myself. Sometimes I feel like, inside, I still feel like her a little bit, and sometimes I wonder if she'll always be there. So, in a way, I think that part of me still resonates with the painting, it’s a soft spot.
Micca, And so i gave u the moon, 45x45cm, 2023
Brigitte:
Would you say that you have a relationship with the little girl inside of you?
Micca:
Kind of. I think there's always that desire, I think for a lot of people, to protect your own inner child. To become the person that she might have needed when you were little, and to embody her. I think that's part of what growing up is in a way, becoming the guardian that your younger self would have needed. So much of what I do is to honor that little girl. I feel proud to say that every past version of me would look at me now and be amazed. So I want to keep that going. I hope that I look at the version of me in 10 years time and feel so proud. So, I do sort of have that relationship with every past version of me in a way. It feels very special. I feel proud of always continuing to evolve and becoming a better person.
Brigitte:
What does your creative process look like?
Micca:
I think a lot of it is very intuitive. I believe in God and I believe that God has a plan and has his own timeline. Sometimes I feel like motivation comes quite intrinsically and quite randomly to me. I have my goals and I try to follow them, but it's strange because sometimes I'll have no desire to paint for, like, two weeks. I won't touch the canvas, then I’ll suddenly paint 6-8 hours a day for a month. Then there are also deadlines. I'll have a deadline and that definitely motivates me to finish. Before, my discipline wasn't that good if I'm honest. It's kind of getting better now, but I also feel like there's no explanation to it, for the reason why. I think it's just suddenly gotten better. I think it's the time in my life where I suddenly feel this urgency and energy to get things done. So lately my discipline has been a lot better. But my ideas, they usually arise randomly and intuitively, mostly when I'm on walks, or when I'm in bed, like, journallying. Almost all of my ideas have come when I've been in stillness, which I need. I need a lot of time to just be alone and be still. And usually, I feel more comfortable and calm after being alone. Then the ideas just come into my head. I'll see the imagery, and then I'll feel a really strong pull to bring it to life. It's a really strong and really urgent feeling. It says “you have to paint this”, “you have to paint this”. And it won't go away until I paint it. It doesn't leave you alone until I get it out. It's like, you have to shit it out. So that's how they get finished as well because it's like, I can't stop thinking about it until it's done, so I'll just keep working on it. Otherwise, I feel like shit. I literally feel like shit.
Micca, Lead Me to Where it is Pure, Oil on wood pannel, 2025, 60x60cm
Brigitte:
What does the completion of a piece look like for you? Is that also based on intuition? Do you typically go back and change things?
Micca:
I'll know if some things need to be tweaked, but I usually work from section to section. Some painters paint in layers, they'll do the whole canvas, layer by layer, and build it up. I only know how to work section by section. So I technically won't move on from the section until I feel like I'm happy with it. and then I move on. So then by the time I fill in the whole painting, it's more or less what I want it to look like. And then if I need to, I go back and tweak something. Like in my last painting, I didn't like the colors of the flowers, so I know that I'm going to go back. It's actually not finished. I'm going to go back and change the colors. And if I don't, in my head, it's not finished. So these are all just intrinsic stylistic choices. It leads me to believe that sometimes maybe the idea is not even mine, maybe I'm just an instrument. Because otherwise, I felt like if there was no other force telling me what to do, I would just think it's finished. It's like another force is almost in control over me. And when I analyze it and I think about it like that, I'm like, it has to be spiritual, or otherworldly.
Brigitte:
What is this relationship between personal agency and control in the creative process versus surrendering to this higher power?
Micca:
I try to be as intuitive with my ideas as possible. Something I love to do is pray. I pray that ideas can be shared- my stories, or a message that I feel is important. I pray that I can share it with other people. Generally, I think I'm just the one that brings the ideas to life. I’ve always been curious about the concept of having thoughts, you know? We're the ones that think our thoughts, but, ultimately, who puts them there? How do thoughts even come into our brain? So it's like, we exist, but how much of our thoughts are even our own?
I think that there's a separation between who you are and your thoughts, because you are the one who is thinking, you're not the thought. So there's this other element at play that's like, who's installing? Where is it coming from? where did it spawn from? Where is the origin? So, it may feel like something is my idea. I feel like I may make the creative decisions and the creative choices because I'm the one that's executing it. But ultimately, is it really my idea? I don't know.
Brigitte:
What kind of art do you personally gravitate towards? What does “good art” mean to you?
Micca:
For me, I love art when I can feel that it is… a direct vomit of the artist themselves. I don't really care too much about what the technique is or how good they are technically. I love when I can look at something and it’s so unique and personal to the artist. When it's immersive, genuine, authentic, and expressive. I appreciate it. Even if it might not be my style, that's the type of art that I appreciate. I would prefer a 2D cut flat cartoon that feels so authentically like someone, than a hyperrealistic portrait that doesn't have much to tell me about the artist. Lately, I've been gravitating to very flat, simple artwork. I can really appreciate a simple piece of artwork that conveys a lot of emotion, but using simple shapes, black and white, without a lot of detail. It feels curious and soft.
