Artist-production designer Leo Abaya works in visual art and films that touch on current Filipino socio-political concerns. He received his BA in Fine Arts from the University Philippines in Diliman in 1995, graduating magna cum laude, and followed up with a Masters in Painting from the Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton in Britain in 2004. He won Best Production Design in the 1998 Metro Manila Film Festival, besides the 1999 FAMAS Awards and the 1999 Gawad Urian for the film, Jose Rizal, and the Production Designer of the Year 1999 Star Awards for Movies. He won the Juror’s Prize in the Artists Association of the Philippines competition in 1992 and held his first art solo, Bliss, at the West Gallery in 1997.