An artist who paints memorial artworks using ashes of dead loved ones says he believes he has “seen apparitions”. Federico Portalupi says he is guided by a “force that decides when I can and can’t paint”.
The 38-year-old, never believed in things that go bump in the night until he started creating his memorial art during a lockdown in the coronavirus pandemic. Since then he has made a name for himself on TikTok where his 2020 reveal of his first-ever ashes memorial ocean artwork went viral with more than 2.5 million views.
And while the self-taught artist, who was born in New York but who grew up in Argentina, said he never believed in the afterlife or anything spiritual before he started this work, too many spooky things have happened for him to ignore. “I remember one night recently when I had finished painting I caught sight of a very tall man standing over one of the paintings I was working on in my studio as I passed by the open door,” he said.
