Luca Tu'avao Walton aka Lucid Luca is a Tongan Pākehā visual artist from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. His vibrant illustrations and animations are love letters to the women who bring colour to his life and cultural identity. His early drawings were gifts for his mother and aunties, and have evolved into portraits that adorn a growing number of fale (and Facebook) walls.
Luca has consistently shared his unique process and perspective on social media. Now his drawings have gone from the family fridge to a digital village of over 15,000 people that cherish his enchanting, sentimental symbols of dreams and realities.
When we chatted, this is what Luca said about becoming a full-time freelance artist.
Dani: How did you find your way into being a freelance artist?
Luca: My mum and my family have never really pushed any other sort of path onto me, like lawyering or something traditionally successful like that. I know she would love me to open my own shop and have a whole thing. I think that’s because the older gen’ views brick and mortar and physical things as having made it or making it in business.
D: For sure! Our generation of creatives are navigating careers that transcend concrete or traditional media.
L: I feel like e-commerce and social media have really changed the game. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it has levelled the playing field, but l think it has made it accessible by removing some of the traditional barriers and prerequisites to selling your work. It definitely comes down to luck as well sometimes, and algorithms that are out of our control. But instead of having to rent a space or a stall, you can have an IG handle and a dream, and that is enough to be official!
D: I love the way your platform has grown, and it makes me so proud when I see our Pacific wāhine connecting in your comments – finding each other through your art. How did you find the courage and motivation to start platforming your own artwork online?
L: That's what I love too. I call it my digital village.
I started posting my art on Instagram when I was 16. I opened my first print shop around that age too, simply because people wanted to buy my work. After school I’d jump on Facebook Live and do Indian ink paintings while my friends watched. There’d be 50 to 100 people on there, supposedly doing their homework… and I definitely wasn’t doing mine.
Then I developed really severe agoraphobia. I was housebound for long stretches of time, sometimes months. I’d make little breakthroughs through therapy, but it was something I lived with for years. That period is really where the worlds in my art were born. I needed somewhere to escape to. When COVID happened, it was such a strange feeling – suddenly everyone joined me. I was already well versed in this. I was like, “girl, I've been in lockdown. Staying home? Piece of cake.”
The irony was that I was only just starting to make progress with my agoraphobia when the world shut down. But something shifted. Everyone else was also looking for comfort, nostalgia, and little moments of beauty in their homes. That was when my work really started to take off, around 2021. People were buying prints because they wanted their homes to feel warm and personal. The message I heard over and over again was, “She looks like my mum,” or “That reminds me of my aunty,” or “My grandma looked just like that when she was young.” That was the biggest compliment I could receive. It told me people weren’t just seeing my illustrations, they were seeing their own lives reflected back at them.
From there, everything really grew through word of mouth. I was still working retail in a hardware store until 2023 while all of this was growing. It was such a surreal time because my Instagram was slowly taking off, and every now and then someone would recognise me and ask for a selfie. I’d always think, “Of all days, I’m in this fluorescent neon uniform.” But, honestly, that’s part of the story too!
D: I think you have done an amazing job of sharing your journey, and letting people into your world as you are creating it. Your community is able to see you growing personally and professionally over time.
L: I used to look back at my older work and cringe. But, people meet you where you’re at. They connect with your voice long before they analyse your technical ability. We don’t have to pretend we’ve already figured everything out. It’s okay to be seen while you’re still becoming.
D: How did you transition from drawing for fun to monetising your art?
L: On one hand, there’s the reality that a lot of artists know well. Some people assume your work is free, or that your time is free. I haven’t managed to escape that. It’s an ongoing battle to remind people that creative work has value. But on the other hand, I never really had to convince people to buy my art. People have asked me to sell it since I was a teenager.
I’ve always believed that if you create something that’s genuinely your truth, it’ll be someone else’s truth too. The people who connect with it don’t just see a picture, they see a piece of themselves. For some people, owning my work becomes a quiet marker of identity. It tells you something about what they love, the communities they feel part of.
By “lucidly” dreaming (hehe) and visualising things, I’ve definitely attracted opportunities towards me. These days, I’d say about a quarter of my income comes from the “art-art” side of things, like prints. Most of it comes from commissioned illustration work. One day I got an Instagram DM from a designer who contracts illustrators, and that’s now a huge part of what keeps the lights on. I illustrate educational resources and children’s books, and that all came about because someone discovered my work online. Since people usually find me through my illustrations of Pasifika people, a lot of the work I get is rooted in that.
Pacific brands often approach me to collaborate on clothing or merchandise. When I draw people, they look like my family and friends. They represent real versions of us, not stereotypes. Even when I’m navigating corporate realness or commercial work, approaching everything with heart is my MO.
D: The thing that strikes me most in your work is how you so accurately depict not only how we (Pacific women) wish we were seen, the beauty that we wish people saw, but also the specific details of our everyday lives: the jewellery, the clothing, or even something to do with the makeup. You have managed to capture both our dreams and our realities.
L: I think that’s because my world sits somewhere between memory and fantasy. It’s an idyllic dreamworld grounded in reality and nostalgia. You’ll see echoes of an older kind of beauty that reminds people of their mum’s era or their grandma’s golden years. I want people to recognise themselves in it, but a version of themselves they always deserved to see. It’s familiar enough to feel like home, but dreamlike enough to feel aspirational.
D: Considering where you started and where you are now, how do you want your creative career to evolve in the future?
L: I feel incredibly privileged to be doing this right now. Maybe one day I’ll step into another kind of creative role and not be self-employed, but this is the season of life I’m in, and I’m really enjoying it. Everything that’s happened has come from making the work I genuinely wanted to make, finding the people who resonated with it, and tending to that community.
People love saying social media isn’t real, but I don’t agree. The relationships I’ve built through it are real. The opportunities it’s brought me are real. The fact that it helps me pay my bills is definitely real. Social media completely changed my career because it meant I didn’t have to wait for the traditional path. I didn’t go to art school. None of that makes me feel like any less of an artist. At least not to me… and maybe my mum.
D: You didn't wait to be seen and valued by someone else. You didn't ask for permission from the institution.
Luca: I didn’t wait. I was there, regardless. Fighting for visibility on the frontier that is social media. If people connect with it, if they love it, it finds a place in their homes and in their lives.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
