Brent Paguibitan

(he/him) [BFA Visual Studies, 3rd year]

I am a Calgary-based figurative artist working primarily in oil. I paint in oil because it refuses to be rushed, a quiet protest against a world built for everything instant. My work sits in the lineage of the Baroque: Caravaggio's structural use of darkness, Bouguereau's patient study, Helnwein's unbearable precision, Hale's unresolved figures, all shape how I build weight into empty space. I paint people because sitting with someone long enough to truly see them is harder to find than ever. I keep returning to melancholy and doubt: feelings that rarely get much room.

Rock, 2026.

This piece uses techniques I learned studying the biblical figures in the Baroque period. Learning the Bible well enough to understand it became a spiritual journey that seriously tested my faith. I've talked with the religious, the agnostic, and the atheist, and those conversations left me with more questions than answers, especially the ones with people fully devoted to their faith. Their devotion made me yearn for the same, but I can't ignore human nature or how religion has been used for power. That conflict leaves me questioning everything.

I wanted to depict that frustration through St. Peter, the disciple most trusted by Jesus, who still denied him three times. Like Peter, I battle my own faith, and I suspect I always will. Peter reached devotion in the end. That's what I want, though I don't know if I'll get there. I captured that doubt through his hands raised over his head, and in the distance between him and the white section on the right. Jesus appears only as an abstract fish; I don't feel worthy of depicting him directly, and it is a reminder that we're not meant to know what he looks like. The right side stays faint and calm, representing God: always there, always on my mind. In the end, this isn't really about St. Peter. It's about my own struggle with religion.