Cecilia Cabalquinto and her husband moved to Geelong in 2011, where she has since carved out an artistic niche for herself painting with coffee and other beverages. She spoke to Matt Hewson about living a creative life in the region.
Art was always one of Cecilia Cabalquinto’s favourite pastimes as a child.
While she has become an established local artist with her own distinctive style, she has travelled a long and winding road to get there.
Growing up in Manila in the Philippines, Cecilia was “a quiet kid, the shy type”, who loved nothing more than drawing her favourite animated characters.
“At what age, I’m not sure, but from memory I was always drawing princesses,” she said.
“Also Garfield, anything animated, that’s what I was learning to draw in grade school. It was probably around grade three I realised there was something there, but I didn’t really take it seriously because it was just fun.”
In high school Cecilia’s artistic interests and skills continued to blossom; she kept visual journals, began painting and participated in art competitions.
But even then, she “wasn’t taking it too seriously…I was just having a good time, and also I was always being told that you wouldn’t earn anything from art, so it was just a hobby”.
After finishing high school Cecilia decided to do a science degree. But even so, she ensured her creative side would still be stimulated, enrolling in an industrial design course.
“I actually tried to find a course that had the least amount of math because I wanted more creative stuff,” she said.
“The brief said ‘you’re going to be designing toys, cars’, which sounded fun, but no, I had to do strength of materials, engineering mechanics.
“But it was good, and I think my love for the arts was honed there because I got to do product design, which actually led to my career in visual merchandising.”
During college Cecilia also met Marco, a fellow student and choir member.
“I liked him before I actually met him – how does that work?” she laughed.
“I was in charge of going through applications for our choir at the time and his photo popped up. My friend was like, ‘I know this guy, he’s nice’ and I thought he was cute, so the rest is pretty much history.”
The two shared many interests – Marco is also a photographer – and, after marrying in 2007, the pair relocated to Darwin a year later, where Cecilia became a visual merchandiser for Country Road.
“We always felt we were destined not to be in the Philippines, in the sense that all the things we wanted to achieve, we felt, were outside the Philippines,” she said.
“Part of that was making sure that we provided for our family down the line, but the other thing is we were very much explorers; we just don’t like staying in one space.
“We picked Australia because it was one place neither of us had been to and we wanted to explore it.”
However, after three years in Darwin and the birth of their first child the Cabalquintos decided to look elsewhere, eventually settling on Geelong in 2011.
“I don’t think we picked Geelong for Geelong, because we didn’t know much about it,” Cecilia said.
“But we wanted to experience another part of Australia….and honestly, we couldn’t have picked a place better than Geelong, it’s just beautiful. It has everything; it’s coastal, it’s quiet but busy enough.
“I think what drew us in general was that it was the perfect place to bring up a family. Never did we think that we would have all these other opportunities coming our way.”
Those opportunities came through Geelong’s creative community, giving both Cecilia and Marco the chance to explore their respective visual media.
After the birth of her second child in 2015, Cecilia began “doodling and thinking”, and in 2017 she decided to try to meet others interested in drawing and painting.
“I found Geelong Illustrators through Instagram, and at the time they were starting a new phase,” she said.
“So it started with Clare Holder and Mandy Dollery and then I was the third one who came in. It was just the three of us doing random things, making up stuff, not thinking much about it.
“That was the humble beginning of what is now a bigger group, but also how I got into everything – with that connection, it gave me the opportunity to meet all these other artists.”
Since then Cecilia has had her work presented in nearly 30 exhibitions at venues such as Little Creatures, 101 Ryrie Arts, Brunswick Street Gallery and The Space.
She also took part in the inaugural Yarra Street Window Gallery and Bellarine Arts Trail last year and had a show with husband Marco in 2023 at Platform Arts.
“I was drawing and drawing…I started doing illustrations of my children for children’s books, I was trying everything from sharpies to acrylic to watercolour, which I hated at the time,” she said.
“It’s a very hard medium, there’s no turning back. With acrylic, if you don’t like it you can go over it, you’ll be fine.
“I had to do a project for Geelong Illustrators using watercolour and when it was over I was like, oh god, this is done, I’ll never use it again.
“Six months later, I was thinking, I have to use watercolour again for something. And that was pretty much it, I was in love with it, and now everything I do is in watercolour.”
Then, a random thought changed everything. Sitting with her kids one day at a cafe, Cecilia decided to paint the scene using her coffee.
“I was having a coffee and I thought, what would this look like on paper?” she said.
“So I got an espresso and started painting my kids in the background. I thought, this could be something.
“And that was pretty much the beginning of this coffee thing. It’s just like watercolour, so my love for that just transferred to coffee.”
Cecilia began experimenting, painting with different types of coffee, finding out how it was affected by time, temperature and sun exposure.
“I started in late 2017 doing the coffee thing, but I only really started doing it officially a year or two later because I was waiting to see how it would turn out,” she said.
“It was a process to see if it was even going to be worth doing down the line, because tea changes colour in an instant, wine changes immediately.”
Once she was happy coffee would consistently hold its colour and quality, Cecilia began creating in earnest.
Cafes were, of course, the natural sites for painting with coffee, as they were both interesting scenes to depict and the source of the material.
Slowly, an idea began to emerge in her mind. First Cecilia thought about releasing a book of cafe illustrations, but soon broadened the idea to include contributors, authors who could write poems or stories inspired by their local cafe.
Backing her idea, Cecilia successfully applied for one of City of Greater Geelong’s Creative Seed grants for 2024-25, receiving funding of $2500 to explore a proof of concept.
“The grant really helped, and because it was a Geelong grant I thought it should support more people in Geelong,” she said.
“So I was able to give part of the grant to my contributors…three brave souls who applied.”
Cecilia used the poems and story provided by the contributors to inspire her illustrations, painting scenes in the cafes with the coffee they make.
The project has so far been successful, with Cecilia planning to gather more contributors, provide augmented reality experiences with music and animations and create a larger, fold-out book.
She also hopes to pursue a bigger project, travelling around the country to meet cafe owners and coffee roasters and produce videos painting with their coffee.
All the while, Cecilia juggles a family and a full-time job as a picture framer, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I do it because I love it – it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do and I just can’t believe that it’s finally coming to fruition,” she said.
“I feel like I’m doing it for me…I never thought that I would be able to do this, and now that it’s here I’m going to take care of it like a baby.”
