Despite dropping out of high school, self-taught artist Mr. Edwin Siroi has been using his passion for art to carve out a living for himself and has really come into his own as a fine art painter. “I discovered that I had a natural talent for drawing and art early on in life and most of my earlier artwork are pencil sketches.” Edwin does different types of artworks, including sketches, signwriting and screen-printing, but it is his fine art acrylic paintings of unbelievably beautiful landscapes and life like portraits, that are quite captivating. Growing up, Edwin was consumed with drawing and often spent most of his school days, sketching in his schoolbooks and he soon found himself out of school. “I left school in Grade 9. My parents saw that all my school books were filled with drawings only and they decided to send me back to the village, to ‘wok kopra’ on the family’s coconut tree plot.” This was in 2013 and it wasn’t until 2016, did Edwin pick up his pencil again, to do some art. “I drew some illustrations for books for the Paladine Primary School and after that, I decided to give more of my time to do painting.” The painter is now doing commissioned work that is charged according to canvas size. “I do portraits on A4 and A5 canvases for about K400. It usually takes about 3 to 4 days to complete off a piece of art, depending on the details.” So far, Edwin’s most prized work has been a mural he did for the local Catholic Church depicting the ‘Last Supper’ that saw him earn in excess of K10 000. Edwin now uses his social media platform to share his art and do business and so far, he continues to do commissioned work for people in Australia and in PNG