Chantel Bustos
[BFA Honours Visual Studies, 4th year]
My artistic practice explores the emotional realities of everyday life through figurative painting, portraiture, and mixed media. Drawing from personal experiences, relationships, and uncomfortable subjects, I use realism to make internal experiences visible. Through layered oil painting, unfinished surfaces, fragmentation, and familiar environments, I explore themes of identity, vulnerability, avoidance, and human connection. My work balances realism with subtle surreal elements, allowing psychological tension to emerge through the human figure and its surroundings. Ultimately, I aim to transform personal experiences into images that invite viewers to reflect on and recognize aspects of their own lives.
Inertia, Oil on Canvas, 3' x 4', 2026.
Knock First, 2026.
Knock First captures a moment of interruption and vulnerability. Seated topless in my cluttered room, I turn toward the viewer, confronting an external gaze that reflects shame, self-scrutiny, and the fear of judgment. Surrounded by unfinished projects, laundry, and accumulated belongings, the environment becomes a physical manifestation of internal paralysis, pressure, and avoidance. The clutter reflects the psychological weight of procrastination, where intentions remain unresolved. Through this moment of exposure, the painting explores the tension between wanting to begin and feeling unable to act.
Inertia, 2026.
Inertia explores the paradoxical comfort found in avoidance. The painting depicts me lying motionless on a couch as flames slowly consume the room. Despite the surrounding danger, the figure remains calm, reflecting how avoidance can feel safer than confronting fear, pressure, and expectations. The fire symbolizes accumulating anxiety, unresolved responsibilities, and emotional strain, while its warmth represents the temporary relief found in inaction. Through this contradiction, Inertia examines procrastination as a psychological state where awareness and paralysis coexist, and avoidance becomes both a source of comfort and self-destruction.
Knock First, Oil on Canvas, 3' x 4', 2026.