Krista Berga Portrait of Paul Milliss

Paul Milliss is a fine art picture framer. Krista Berga lives and works in a flat above his business, Paddington Frames, and has spent a great deal of time watching him work and talking with him. ‘It is as if he is always sitting for me’, she says. ‘Also he has been framing Archibald portraits for over 20 years.’ The frame is an integral element of Berga’s portrait of Milliss.

Berga always uses black and white, not liking what she describes as ‘the veneer of colour. Colour introduces the problem of illustration.’ She draws and paints heads, and only heads, as opposed to faces. As a sculptor her work is figurative but as a painter heads fascinate, obsess and consume her. Milliss has had major brain surgery – ‘his head has been pulled apart, deconstructed and reconstructed’ – which seemed to Berga to have an interesting connection with the way she works. ‘I’m interested in remaking heads as a record of what a head is and what it speaks of – and it speaks of so much, both physical and mental. A head is both substantial and indefinite; hard to comprehend and yet there presented in front of you. The head is such a carrier of worry and damage, so exposed. You have to be able to build it out of individual gestures, gestures which are wired into the brain and into the face to fully articulate it.’

Berga studied drawing with David Paulson in Brisbane from 1992 to 1996.