Heidi Lustig is a surreal figurative artist from Australia creating under the alias Violet Portrayal. She paints softly strange, lucid dream-like portraits anchored by graphite faces. Her work uses a mix of iconography, the inclusion of animal chaperones, and the subject’s expression to explore concepts such as loss, female rage, fertility and resilience. Her childhood holidays spent on her grandparent’s Australian outback farm amongst the birds and baby animals, as well as her struggles with secondary infertility and PTSD all inform her unique practice.
