My art delves into the multifaceted experience of growing up, navigating the complexity of my identity, and mourning the loss of childhood. Since childhood, I have always been inspired by picture books and loved telling stories and expressing my feelings through her artwork, digging deep into her memories and emotions, analyzing them, and eventually presenting them as art. The picture books I read as a child heavily influences my art style, with subjects like animals, vibrant colors, and surreal fantasy themes. I aim to share my experiences and thoughts through art so that others feel less alone and more understood.

I further explain this idea in one of my artworks in my portfolio titled “Slice” . It shows me lying on the ground with a slice of birthday cake cut out of my own body. A party hat is next to me. This drawing represents my mixed feelings about growing older and losing a slice of myself–my youth and innocence. As an add-on of this digital drawing, I also made a birthday cake slice out of ceramics.

“Premonition” means “a strong feeling that something is about to happen, especially something unpleasant.” I have struggled with anxiety for a long time. I imagine these feelings as a tiger that follows me constantly. After many years I have “made friends with the tiger” and it has not hurt me yet, I’ll still always have to be careful and mindful that it is a tiger and it might hurt me. This is what my anxiety feels like. The four illustrations depict me living my daily life, such as taking a bath, getting ready in the morning, eating at the table and lying in bed while the tiger follows me around.

“Leftover Memories” is a two page comic about present day me meeting my younger self. As I try to have a conversation with her, she turns away from me and runs away, accidentally leaving her teddy bear behind. The younger me running away and leaving her toy behind represents my childhood leaving me too quickly and only leaving me a bunch of unwanted emotional baggage and memories. I made a ceramic teddy bear to bring it to life and make the audience feel like they can see all of my memories that were left behind.

“it's flying by faster than i thought” was created the day I discovered that my wisdom teeth were growing out. Seeing my wisdom teeth come out made me sit down and realize time is flying by and I am growing up faster than I think. From celebrating losing my baby teeth as a child to worrying about losing my wisdom teeth as I enter my early adulthood, which represents a mark of growth and maturity. In this piece I am looking in the mirror while all of my teeth fall out of my mouth, while a ghostly figure of a younger me stares from behind. Each tooth represents the fragments of my youth falling out in front of my eyes.

When I was young my parents would take me to a fish shop tucked away in the street markets of Hong Kong. I was fascinated by all the reds, oranges and whites of the fish swimming around in the plastic bags, and the blue ocean-like atmosphere of the shops. I would always beg my mom to buy a goldfish just for me to take care of. She would tell me that I was not old enough to take care of the fish on my own and I would have to wait. The goldfish, which usually represents luck, wealth and fortune, represents all the important things I couldn’t handle on my own when I was young. Now that I am older I can take care of things on my own and that I am responsible for everything I do.

I present my artwork through self portrait digital drawings, but also bring special parts of my artwork to life with ceramics. I prioritize heavy use of vibrant colors in my work to capture the “childlike nostalgia” feeling, the feeling I used to experience, and desperately want to feel once more.