digital art portfolio of oliver achilles

Oliver Achilles (he/him): a 24-year-old transman with a BA in Studio Art. Passionate about queer media and self-expression as an act of resistance. Primarily a digital painter, but curious about and exploring 3D modeling, 2D animation, music production, and game development.

My art invites one to confront what it means to choose to continue living in a world that doesn't want one to. To sit warily between an idyllic landscape and bloodied exhaustion. To notice the subtle but intentional callbacks to great Renaissance painters, then to further confront how none of those greats could ever have been both trans and remembered. In a way, I've undergone my own Renaissance- a rebirth of intent, a resolve steeled, an artistic continuation of the transformations I've already enacted on my own body.Using Blender to "sketch" my compositions and Clip Studio to paint them to vivid, detailed life, my pieces depict a world of fantasy, with fairy wings and knightly armor- but it is not a world that is free of pain. To bare one's soul as a trans person today is to invite in enough agony to shatter such fantasies of a life able to be lived happily. The most important message I aim to deliver is that self-acceptance and community are the only ways through. Neither are easy; both are absolute necessities.

2023