Taking the first drawing class in college hence becomes the hinge of my perception of arts. There I met my professor, as well as a mentor of my life, Tula Telfair. I still recall the first day I see her sublime paintings. All of her images are invented, and only employed with her memory—the memory of living in Africa and Asia when she was a child, or the daily three hour driving between the New York City and Wesleyan—but not from observation or even the utilization of any photos. Like a conductor, she assembled the movingly and powerful elements from her memory, and turned them into an art piece. ‘Take pictures of what you see with your eyes’, she says, ‘and store every beautiful moments in your brain’.
Use the ultimate capacity of imagination, and love art as a matter of life. Now I see everything in a new perspective. I've become even more intrigued by art, not only for designing purposes but also for history and the way the world is. I walk down the street and view everything as a picture or painting: the way the light hits a building or the different shades of blue the sky has. This encoded communication between everything in daily life as well as how your eyes and brain react to it, and elevates the experience of the piece to something more than, and also less than, "real."
For my senior thesis, I will be painting a series figurative painting, based on my own memory and emotion turmoil. It also stands for my struggle of finding the projection of “real”.
Having studied formally in the United States and China, each possessing diverse international