Lydia Ciconte paints with her hands.

I am a painter from Melbourne. I started out experimenting with everything I could get hold of and settled on acrylic, and then on my hands. Working without a brush is not a trick. It is the only way I can get the pressure and the speed I want, and it means the surface holds the record of how it was made.

In 2006 I took a studio in bayside Melbourne and stopped calling it a hobby. Since then the work has gone into private collections in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Portugal and the United States, and into a number of public spaces here at home.

The subjects come from travel. Africa gave me the animals. The high country gave me fire. Antarctica and the south of New Zealand gave me ice. Fire is the one people know me for. I do not see the loss in it. Fire takes everything down to carbon and leaves the ground ready to start again, and the dance of it is beautiful.