Filippi’s work is surreal, abstract, and impressionistic, characterized by a constant drive to experiment artistically and explore content ranging from the human form to organic and geometric abstractions. Major themes within his practice include gender, trauma, spirituality, and nature, often highlighting the tension and duality born from existing in disparate ideological spheres. This internal friction stems from his lived experience: navigating a queer identity within an unaccepting culture as an adolescent, toggling between conflicting socioeconomic environments in college, and reconciling his rural roots with the urban spaces he inhabited as an adult.

After working as a production specialist for a corporate art consulting firm in Boston, Filippi relocated to Burlington, Vermont, in 2020 to seek sanctuary from a high-population area during the pandemic and to escape an abusive domestic situation. Since that transition, he has devoted the majority of his time to painting and his work with Burlington City Arts. He continues to use his art to deconstruct opposing identities, exploring the feeling of being an outsider in both professional and heteronormative worlds. These inherent contradictions—feeling too rural for the city and too urban for the country—serve as the defining forces that shape his perspective and his creative output.

Painting of a landscape view across the lakefront where mountains hold high in the sky. Primarily done in blue, orange, and black.
Painting depicting a lightning storm where the background cloud is done in heavy black and greys, stricken apart by the lighting in a bright shade of yellow.
Painting done in blending colors of spring - blue, light pink, light green
Painting done to represent summer where the background is a deep brown and the center is a vegetal shape sprawling out that uses a deep yellow and a soft yellow at its center.
Painting depicting the eye of the storm where blues, teals, and greens swirl around an almost white sphere.
Painting depicting an orb of light in orange where the further the ccanvas goes, the lesser the impact is, resulting in brown.
Abstract strokes done from side to side in reds, teals, blues, and yellows.
Abstract painting done in grounded, brown and red tones with splashes of blue -- the strokes go from straight and sharp to circular.
Painting depicting a bare landscape minus one tree done in silhouetted black, where the background is a almost sentient moving orb of yellow light with wings of blue, purple, yellow, and orange.
Landscape depicting a view of the sunset across a beach & water, done in primarily purples, soft blues, and oranges.