Rodel Tapaya
Rodel Tapaya was born in 1980, in Montalban, Rizal, Philippines. He broke out in the art scene by earning the coveted top prize in the Nokia Art Awards competed among artists in the Asia-Pacific region which allowed him to pursue intensive drawing and painting courses at Parsons School of Design in New York and from the University of Helsinki in Finland prior to graduating from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. In 2011, he won a landmark achievement for a Filipino artist by winning the Signature Art Prize given by the Asia-Pacific Breweries Foundation and the Singapore Art Museum. He currently lives in Bulacan, Philippines.