Loribelle Spirovski

But I guess I have memories of, because my mum is a very beautiful woman, a lot of male attention that she would receive would make me feel very threatened and very protective over her.

Even though I, at the time, didn't really know what that meant, I think I just sensed that it was predatory towards her and obviously I wanted to protect her because my mum, even though she was older than me and she was looking after me, I felt strangely maternal over her in a weird way because she's also quite a young person.

She's very young at heart.

And I don't think she and I had a traditional mother-daughter relationship.

We really were more like best friends who lived together, even when I was very young.

It's interesting.

What sort of gifts would he send you?

So he would send me packages for my birthday and they got larger and larger over the years.

And my dad's brother is also a visual artist.

He's a painter, still lives in Serbia in this incredible house in the mountains just by himself.

And on my fifth birthday, he sent me a birthday card from his younger brother with a sketch of myself done from, I guess, a still of the Little Miss Philippines pageant that I had won the first round of.

So I was wearing the same floral tiara, the same little gown and my mum's one of the necklaces that my dad bought for her when they were dating.

And I saw this drawing, which was done in colour pencil, and it just blew my mind.

I had never seen anything like it in my life.

I really hadn't encountered art before.

And just this idea of I, I could become the subject of an artwork was wild.

And I think I didn't really know what to do with that information at the time.

I was seven years old when I met my dad for the first time.

And obviously he was only coming for a few months, however long the tourist visa was.

But I distinctly remember that day at the airport.