Brand Story

FOKE is an Australian artist-led universe of prints, colour, curious shapes and good energy.
Created by Holly Clinton in the Macedon Ranges, Victoria, every piece begins with original artwork and a refusal to blend in.

COLOUR WITHOUT APOLOGY

FOKE began with an obsession with prints, colour, shape and art that questions why everything needs to make sense. I’ve always seen the world in colour and form, finding patterns in ordinary places, unexpected combinations and possibilities where others might see rules.

But before FOKE became what it is today, I put down my drawing to help care for my sister Amber when her breast cancer returned. My family and I cared for her until she passed in 2020. During that time, the sketchbooks closed, not because I stopped being an artist, but because I was busy loving my sister to the edge of her life.

Cancer reshaped my own life too. BRCA2 testing revealed that I carried the gene fault, and routine screening later found 8cm of DCIS in my left breast. With my baby daughter on my hip, I chose to have a double mastectomy. I later chose to remain flat.

After losing Amber, I picked up an iPad and began drawing again, not with a business plan, but because grief needed somewhere to go. Drawing gave my hands something to do when my head and heart were full. Slowly, the patterns came back. Those small sketches grew into the bold, confident artwork that now lives across FOKE.

In the years after Amber passed, I also lost my good friend Danny, and then my stepdad Leigh, the person I was closest to in this world. Grief lives inside me now. Losing them hurts so much, and that pain drives me to live with intention, to pay attention to the time I have and to make a life that matters.

That experience changed how I think about bodies, clothes and visibility. I wanted to make pieces for real lives and real bodies, including bodies with scars, bodies living flat and bodies that have changed. Pieces that bring comfort without asking anyone to disappear.

FOKE is what happened when my life as an artist met everything I had lived through. It is colour without apology, play without an age limit and art that gives you permission to take up space. Made thoughtfully with small-scale partners, FOKE is art for real life, and for people who still want to live boldly, even after life has changed them.