Background

Born in Manila, Philippines, Zeus grew up in a family of artists and architects. He considers his grandfather, Gregorio Melchor Paredes, as his greatest influence. Gregorio designed and detailed architectural ornaments of several government building in the Philippines, including the Congress Building, the main Post Office building, and the Metropolitan Theater. These buildings still remain as prominent landmarks of the Philippine capital. Although Gregorio died before Zeus was born, he saw the original drawings and sketches of the sculptures that his grandfather used for the Metropolitan Theatre. These sketches influenced him in developing his love for sketching and drawing at a young age.

So at 13, he started working as a part-time draftsman for the architectural firm of his father, Architect Aquiles Castro Paredes, who was a professor of architecture at Mapua Institute of Technology for 26 years. Together with Zeus’s siblings, they spent countless hours learning principles of architecture and design, as well as anthropometrics, color principles, architectural delineation, and rendering. Not only did their father teach them through lectures, they also learned through unconventional means such as by challenging them to write and draw upside down.

In college, he majored in Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas and shortly after graduating, rejoined his father’s firm to work as part-time designer, space planner, and detailer, and also as an art director for a five-star hotel in Manila.

Life would take Zeus in many directions as an artist, gaining experience in industrial design, graphic design, furniture design, and interior design. He would also later become a small business entrepreneur, bringing Filipino aboriginal art design to t-shirts and bags sold around the Philippines.

However, Zeus has not forgotten his passion for drawing and painting. In the last decade, Zeus has been rediscovering his artist's voice culminating in over 100 pieces focused on his representation of the human experience through pen and ink.