XIAO WANG

 Xiao Wang is a Chinese painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland where he received his BFA degree in Painting and Printmaking. He continued his study at San Francisco Art Institute and earned his MFA degree in Painting. Wang has shown internationally in Europe and The United States. His work has been featured in publications such as Juxtapoz Magazine, Hi-Fructose Magazine, Create Magazine, and New American Paintings. Wang has also attended artist residency programs at MASS MoCA (MA), the Vermont Studio Center (VT), Root Division (CA) and Art Point (CA).

Hi Xiao! Thanks for joining me for Mint Tea. To begin, what’s your favorite tea?

My favorite tea is called pu’er. I don't think is that well known in the US, but it is very popular in China. It is a type of black tea, I guess. Very earthy, very mild. I love drinking it at night. It is a night tea.

Could you tell me more about your background and your practice?

Sure. I am originally from China, and I went to school at San Francisco Art Institute, where I got my MFA degree. Recently, two years ago, I moved to New York City, so that's where I am right now. I mainly focus on oil painting in realistic style.

What projects are you working on right now?

I'm working on several projects right now. At the moment, the most pressing thing for me is building up a new body of work after my previous solo show back in January, February at The Java Project. I have another show coming up in November, so time is ticking.  I'm trying to build up as many artworks as possible. Also, I'm working with Penguin Random House on a book cover design.

Are your new projects going to be a continuation of the conversation that you have with your previous artwork? Or is it going in a different trajectory?

I think my new work is always built in some way on top of my previous works. So it's always a form of continuation but it also has a level of updates in it. I think my current body of work is very, very similar to what I was working on before. But if you've seen my previous work, you notice that they're mainly focused on landscapes and foliage, my works are shifting kind of more dramatically towards the more figurative.

I am the most familiar with your figurative oil paintings. Can you talk about how and why you choose to work with the medium that you do?

I've been working with oil for a long time, I think the first time I at least tried to use oil, I was maybe like 17, 16. I really enjoyed it, and I just always loved the medium, always enjoy how flexible it is, how many different things you can do with such simple material. And my work, especially in recent years, is becoming more and more focused on realistic style. Oil painting is just the best medium for it. Again, you can do a lot of different things with it, versus if you use acrylic or gouache or watercolor, they're very specifically designed for a couple of purposes. I always loved painting figures, I think I actually kind of shied away from figure for quite a while because there's just so many things that you have to think about when painting figures in terms of representation, in terms of history, in terms of a lot of things. That makes it a very difficult subject to deal with, so for a while, the way I kind of looked at it, I said if I didn't know what to do with the figure, then I'm going to kind of take a break from it, and after I actually figure out what to do, I'm really going to come back to it. Which is what I'm doing now. So that's another reason why when you look at my previous body of work it’s more focused on landscape, because I was still kind of trying to figure out where does figure come in to my work.

What is your painting process like? Do you start the painting with a specific image in mind from the beginning or does it evolve organically as you go?

I usually start with a painting with an idea. Sometimes very specific, sometimes not, but usually I would have a somewhat clear idea of what I'm going to do with the figure, the poses, and what the figure general would look like. Then I'll do a photoshoot, and I think a lot of times the background kind of comes in second. I have a habit of just taking photos of potential source materials wherever I go. Whenever I see something that I think it might be useful for painting later, I'll snap a photo of it, so I build up this big library of source materials, a lot of them are landscape elements, foliage elements. Then when the painting is like undergoing planning, I will look through these materials and pick the useful ones out and do a lot of collaging and do a lot of thinking. Some of them can be very simple. Some of them could be very complicated. It really depends.

Was there a work that you thought was gonna be one way when you started and then it grew organically include the current work?

Yeah, almost always, I would say. Once the planning stage is done, generally, I know exactly how the painting will look, but the planning stage is where the most of the changes will happen. Generally, I will have an idea but by the time the idea develops into something more solid, something ready to paint, it will be very different from what I started with.

What inspires your images?

Well, there are different kinds of sources. In terms of the my concept and content, a lot of my paintings have specific references to art history. Take one of my recent paintings, called “Drinker,” for instance. That one is directly referencing a trend in 19th century Europe, especially France, of depicting the bohemian class people drinking absinthe in the cafe. And that happens very often in my painting, there's usually some kind of reference either vaguely, or very obviously, in my piece. Other times I try to be just a little bit more relaxed and just paint what I really want to paint, but generally I will have some kind of idea of what the poses and what the general palette will look like.

In terms of influences and inspirations, I think it’s kind of an accumulation through time, like this piece, I'll be more inspired by this, and next piece, I'll be inspired by that. Then over time, different things, different pieces coming together.

Speaking of historical inspiration, do you think that art history repeats itself? Or do you think that something that's truly innovative and something that's truly new exists in the art world?

So the way I see it is, art history is not really art history, art history is something that we invented, this concept of the history of art, but really the way I see it is art history is kind of a reflection of the other facets of history. You really see how things were through the art produced at that time. The art is sort of like a clue or art is like some kind of mirror of the time. I don't think art history is something that exists apart from history; it is the reflection of what actual history is like. It really depends on who writes the history, there are a lot of things getting written out, a lot of things get filtered out, a lot of things get written in. It's never really sort of objective in a way. Art is like a way to really see some of the things that don't really get to be that obvious.

I see that you paint a lot of figures. Who are they? Who do you like to paint?

I'm recently painting more and more of myself. I think it has something to do with my work shifting more from observation of the world towards self-exploration. Especially after like a year and a half of the pandemic, I think I am more starting to think about how I feel about things instead of how I see others feel about things.  I'm starting to paint more and more of myself, which never really happened before. With other of my pieces, I paint just generally whoever is around me. Also, this year, I'm kind of having a more conscious kind of update to paint more Chinese people, paint more Asian people in general, because I'm starting to kind of pay more attention to Chinese history, Asian history, which is something that is generally overlooked in, in the United States. I don't think just Asian faces are enough, I think what I'm really interested in is to actually dig into the complexity of what is it like? What does it mean, for example, to be Chinese? You know, that's, that's a lot more than just a face, right? It has to be something much, much more than that.

How is it different for you when you're painting yourself? Is it harder for you? Or is it actually easier for you to do? Is it funny for you? I also paint myself, and I'm starting to recognize the little kinks that I didn't know about my specific face before when I never actually studied my face myself.

Yeah, I think it is easier, to be honest. It is much easier to paint myself because I can make myself do anything that I don't feel comfortable making other people do. And also, painting, building a scene like my work is very subjective. A lot of times when I think about it, it doesn't make sense for me to kind of build a scene with other people and I feel like when I do that, I'm forcing how I feel on to those people, especially if they're my friends.So it is much easier to just paint myself. But I can't pay myself forever, right? That's the tricky thing because I want to paint as many different people as possible, but also I want to kind of keep that level of like complexity.

The lighting in your paintings is magical. How did the idea of placing figures in fantastically lighted worlds begin?

I think I'm always interested in dramas in paintings. So building something theatrical has always been very interesting for me, I always wanted to do that, even before I actually started painting figure. My early works, which you won't see anymore, because I hide all of them, they all already have that kind of quality to it. I think it’s just when it comes to figure it’s sort of a natural extension of that. And then I think what really kind of changed how I build scenes, if you will, was actually David Lynch, I started watching David Lynch films and I was just fascinated by how lighting and how staging and certain ways of framing things can just like make something very ordinary looks almost supernatural. There's really not that much extra to it, it’s just very simple  composition and lighting and like color palettes. I'm really like, kind of interested in that. So after that, I kind of took that as part of my inspiration to kind of develop into what I what I have right now.

What is your favorite combination of colors for lighting?

My recent works, falls mainly into the  red, purple versus green and blue palette. I always like a palette that gives you a feeling of very artificiality, something very dramatic. I painted all kinds of color combination before, and I think this one, it works the best. At some point, I found I just kept using this palette.

Can you talk about any imagery or symbols that you like to work with?

I would say the symbolism of the elements of landscape or foliage in general is a very important component of my painting. Even today, now that I'm painting more figures, I've always been very interested in landscape as a genre. If you look at the history of landscape, especially starting from Romanticism, when you think about landscape, it should be something very innocent, right? You paint a scene, but it actually is never really that innocent. For example, the idea of nationalism blends into it, colonialism blends into it, and the influence of style too, so it depends on who these paintings are serving, really. So landscape is something I really find fascinating, and what I'm trying to do is to kind of make this new kind of landscape that speaks to this history of romanticism, but also at the same time kind of offers some kind of critique to it.

I see that you like to paint plants. What is your favorite plant to paint?

I like painting leafy plants in general, honestly just because they're paintable, I think. Some other plants, they're just too complicated. There's no way for me to paint everything. I think with my skill level, I am stuck with painting leafy plants for now. I have painted flowers, I think the idea of painting a flower was very attractive to me, so I kind of did that for a little bit. But then I realized, it wasn't as interesting as I f thought. I think it just pure foliage feels a little bit more exciting to me.

What do you think is the role of an artist?

I think artists should just think independently. I think that's really what it is, right? Doesn't matter if you're left leaning, right leaning, or whatever ideology, I think artists have to be able to distinguish themselves from other people who really just kind of go with the flow. So when everyone's saying something, an artist should be able to question it by thinking differently.

What are your favorite colors? Do they find their way into your artworks?

It’s what I mentioned earlier, the palette of purple, red, and pink versus green and blue is kind of my favorite color combination at the moment, I think.

Is there a new medium that you would like to try or to work in more?

I used to do a little bit of a ceramic. Not like professionally but like kind of more for fun. And you know, if I ever have more free time and the space and the studio, I would love to do more ceramics in the future. Otherwise, I'm like kind of laser focused on oil painting.

Where are you located now? Do you think living in Brooklyn influences your practice? How was making art in Glasgow and San Francisco different?

I've lived in Glasgow and Scotland before and I lived in San Francisco. They're all very kind of unique cities when it comes to art in their own way, I think. But in terms of being a place that has so many opportunities to present in front of you, where you have an opportunity to do something big, I think New York, Brooklyn, is really ideal for me. I think Glasgow doesn't matter if it's Glasgow or San Francisco. It's been great to for me to kind of sit down and focus and kind of develop my own work, but in terms of doing something that's more than that, I'm happy that I'm doing it here. I think I definitely work harder here. I mean, the competition, in New York, is there. It definitely motivates you to work more, that's for sure.

How do you stay connected to your community?

I'm lucky that a lot of my friends from before, from San Francisco, I would say, almost all of them I went to school with are either moving here or already moved here. So I suddenly, within the past year have found my old community, which I thought I lost, kind of rebuilding in New York. So that's really exciting. I stay in touch with those friends all the time. I also kind of have some “silent” Instagram friends. I don't know if you know what that means, it’s like kind of mutually following each other, you're watching each other's work and you like and comment on each other's work. But we never really kind of message or talk or in any way, I have quite a few of those silent Instagram friends too.

What's your favorite tool?

I use whatever I can get my hands on. With brushes, I'm actually using cheaper brushes now. I'm using a lot of kind of just very cheap synthetic flat brushes, they're really good when you first buy them, but they kind of disintegrate very quickly after like a week. But because they're so cheap, you can just get new ones. I used to try to use the really good brushes, but they wear out and then you have to buy new ones, and it costs you a lot of money. So I’m kind of sticking cheaper brushes nowadays. My favorite tool is actually my very old iPad that I paint from. I used to print all my reference photos out, and then I discovered I have this really old iPad, I can just paint directly from the screen and have that really saturated color that you have for reference. So that's like probably one of the most important pieces of equipment in my studio. The color you get from displays is infinitely more saturated than anything the paper can achieve, so that actually does help me to kind of retain a better color palette.

What is the space where you do your work?

My studio is in Brooklyn, near Industry City. It’s really nice, I'm actually really lucky to get like such a decent size studio with a relatively affordable price. I've been there for almost two years now. I’m really happy with it, I think I'm gonna try to stay there as long as I can. With the source materials, I collect them just wherever I go. It doesn't have to be specific parks or like specific places. Sometimes it's just random things that I see on the street, I'll snap a photo and maybe I'll never look at it again, and maybe it does become something at some point.

Do you have any ritual that helps you get into the zone?

I don't know, I think the first half an hour is always the trickiest, especially summertime when it's hot. I always need to kind of sit down, let my sweat settle, before I can actually do anything. So I think it's just like having maybe 20 minutes to half an hour, just not actually expecting myself to get any work started. That helps, whenever I go to the studio I’m like, “if I want to actually get started at this time, then I'm gonna get there a half an hour early.” So I'd give myself a little time to kind of wind down from the travel.

When do you know when you are finished with your artwork or a body of work?

With one piece of work that's easy, because usually by the time I go over the picture for maybe like two layers. I'm pretty much done. I know that's pretty much it. With a body of work. I don't generally I don't consider my work as individual bodies of work, they just kind of naturally kind of transition from this to that, and they still look like quite similar in their own way. So the way I see I just keep going, really, and whenever I cut it off, for example if I cut it off for a show, that is a body of work, and then after that I'll just keep going.

Who are your favorite practicing artists?

I can say the artists I found very impressive recently, because I'm always like, for this period of time, I love this artist and then after a while I completely forget about them. I think the last two years, probably the painter that I paid most attention to is Jenna Gribbon. I only got to know her work after I moved to New York. I saw her show in Fredericks and Freiser gallery when I first moved here. I was like, “wow, that's where I want to be.” I really loved the way she handled paint and making everything look so effortless. That's that's one of the things I always wanted to work on. But I keep failing is to make my painting look good, but also at the same time effortless.

I also recommend my former studio mates Tom Colcord and Ileana Tejada. I know their work really well, I went to school with both of them and basically watched their work develop over time. They're both really interesting. artists to talk to. They have a lot to say about what they do and a lot to say about what their thinking was with their work. They just have so much so many interesting things to offer.

What gives you the feeling of butterflies in your stomach?

Maybe it’s when I go to openings and I'm about to talk to someone important, and I don't want to because I'm nervous.

www.xiaowangartist.com | @xiaowang_artist