Born on March 17, 1976 in Quezon City, Sim is the eldest of five children of Gig de Pio and Fe Esterlina. He studied at the O.B. Montessori School and then went to Ateneo de Manila University where he graduated high school in 1994. During his academic training at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in Diliman, de Pio absorbed techniques and constructs from Roberto Feleo and Roberto Chabet, to name a few, who taught him that the pursuit of art making is a vocation rather than a profession. De Pio’s creative principles emphasise his ideas about language and behaviour as well as order and disorder. He believes that a culture of creative preparedness can be achieved through art and technology. He part learned and part developed a painting style for the proclivities for painting human anatomy and his explosion of random energy, thus he produced some of his strongest and mature works between 2005 and 2013. As de Pio aims to strike a balance and be understood by a wider audience, his works unravel the constant push and pull of the spirit and the material which binds us of the duality of our humanity.