Growing up with no access to any painting and art materials, Filipino artist Elito Circa tried and explored different mediums to find his niche and that includes using his own blood, the time when he scraped himself as a boy.
As we know, art—is made up of sweat, tears, and for him—own blood.
In one of his interviews in Reuters, he said that every time he got scraped, he would use his own blood to paint since bloodstains are very hard to remove. At 52 years old, his canvas paintings have drawn both praise and criticism because of his unusual choice of medium.
But that didn’t stop him from doing so.
“My artwork is very important to me because they come from me, it is from my own blood, my DNA is part of it,” said Circa.
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 added.
Circa goes to the town’s health clinic once every three months to have his blood extracted, usually in increments of 500 ml (17 oz), which he stores in a cooler in his studio for future projects.
After painting a 122 x 244 cm (4 x 8 ft) mural depicting the history of Pantabangan, the town where he grew up, Circa has set his sights on a more ambitious project. One of his plans for the new year is to create the largest blood painting ever on a 328-foot canvas, setting a world record for the feat.
