Build Beautiful
Build Beautiful
Where design meets depth
Hosted by interior designer and property developer Linda Habak, Build Beautiful is a podcast about more than just aesthetics - it’s about the intention behind the spaces we shape and the stories we tell.
Each episode features honest, insightful conversations with designers, developers, architects, artists, and creative thinkers who are reimagining the way we live, build, and create.
This is a space for the ideas behind the work - the risks, the pivots, the process. The quiet decisions that shape extraordinary outcomes.
Because beauty isn’t just what we see - it’s what we feel.
And what we choose to build, together.
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Build Beautiful
"I Am a Creative Person, Even Though I Never Admitted It" — Antonia Perricone Mrljak's Late Awakening
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Introduction
There is a kind of artist whose career you can summarise in a paragraph: the school, the prize, the gallery, the rise. Antonia Perricone Mrljak is not that artist. She came to painting late, in her 40s, as a mother, after a first life as a fashion stylist. She walked into Sydney College of the Arts when most of her classmates were half her age, graduated with first class honours, and a year later stood in front of nine metres of blank canvas at Sydney Contemporary and painted, live, for the room. From there, the career people now recognise began.
In This Episode, We Explore:
* Growing up Sicilian-Australian in Sydney's western suburbs, and what it meant to be raised "not Australian"
* Rebelling through fashion as a teenager, and accidentally landing a career at David Jones
* Standing in a harbourside home at 16 and having no idea what a Picasso was
* The catalyst that led her back to study, wanting to be an example for her own children
* Painting nine metres of canvas with zero experience, and the clever trick that got her noticed
* Why she walked away from gallery relationships to work independently
* The fear of being "figured out," and how she talks herself through it
* Her biggest advice for any young artist: put everything in writing
Why This Conversation Matters
Most artist stories follow a familiar shape: talent discovered young, formal training, a steady climb. Antonia's story doesn't follow that shape at all, and that's exactly why it matters. She spent decades not knowing she was creative, mistaking her own instinct for something ordinary. Her path shows that reinvention has no age limit, and that the years spent surviving, adapting and quietly observing can become the very material an artist draws from later.
About Antonia
Antonia Perricone Mrljak is a Sydney-based painter. After a first career as a fashion stylist, she enrolled at Sydney College of the Arts in her late 40s, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with first class honours in 2018. The following year, she painted live across nine metres of canvas at Sydney Contemporary, a moment that launched her painting career. She has since exhibited independently across Australia and internationally, including with a gallery in Auckland.
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