Art Talk | Xueqing Zhu

Xueqing Zhu, born on December 17, 1996, in Hebei Province. She now lives and works in Hangzhou. In 2019, she graduated from the Department of Oil Painting of Beijing University of Technology, and in 2022, she graduated from the Department of Painting of Venice Academy of Fine Arts under the supervision of Professor Diraco. Xueqing's work merges two paths, one from Nordic expressionism and the other from the academic tradition of classical Chinese painting. At this intersection, she was led in a direction that emphasized introspection. The sole purpose of her paintings is to construct intimate sensuous thinking.

 

ART TALK  |  Q & A

 

Q: What do you think about the "fairy tale feel" of your paintings?

 

A. For me, the fairy tale feel of the images is a form of nursery rhyme, but I always hope that it reveals something else. Perhaps I feel that my childhood is not yet complete, so I am still interested in these fairy tale elements. Personally, I always create these fairy tale images with the intention of making a joke and staying with them.

 

Xueqing Zhu
Prima della tempesta, 2022
Oil on wood panel
200 x 300 cm
© Courtesy of the artist

 

Q: How has living in Italy affected you?

 

Artist Xueqing Zhu in her studio © Courtesy of the artist

 

A: In Italy I was lucky enough to establish a proper link with this place, leading me to the way I needed to paint, and surrounded by such appropriate factors: I met a group of young artists and teachers who were also very serious about painting, and after a few twists and turns I got as much as I could into it, I found my own direction, and these people who were really in the state of being an artist made me feel free and open, and this stretched me in the way of my creativity, but the stretching isn't comfortable, and it's also a bit of searching and probing in the midst of a dilemma, but there is no more useless, screwed up stuff to get in your way.

 

Artist Xueqing Zhu in her studio © Courtesy of the artist

 

Q: What about childhood experiences? What made you choose to become an artist?

 

A: I feel a lot of things in my childhood, lack of rationality as a support, I live in a trance of virtual world, is a crossroads of the old era and the new era, a quaint sad China and the convenience of China, white puppies in the coal mountain, the deaf mute in the school, sitting on the old motorbike to watch the dry bar of grey branches of the trees flashing by, I can not be accustomed to the functioning of all the routine things, I want to try to understand the world, but there is always a sense of dystopia and isolation.
 
Artist Xueqing Zhu in her studio © Courtesy of the artist
 
Maybe it's because of my sensitive nature that my feelings towards sadness and happiness would be magnified, and I happened to encounter a not-so-good family atmosphere, so this side of sadness was magnified, and this negative feeling would stick in the little by little view of the world, and these made my initial creations an outlet, but these fragile, negative and pathetic things are not what I want, sadness and happiness are both good and meaningful, and it's important to find a balanced feedback, and that's what I'm doing in my creations after that.
 
Being an artist is a necessity, painting is too big a part of me to be a good architect or novelist, and I'm glad it's not thirty or forty per cent, so I don't have to hesitate about the rest.
 

Xueqing Zhu

Lasciami stare, 2022
Oil on Canvas
130 x 160 cm
© Courtesy of the artist

 

Q: How do you see your painting style progressing? What are the future directions?
 
I think my painting style will always stay in the hand-drawn sense rather than the production sense, what I want to do is to find as close as possible to the freedom of expression, I think this is the good development, as for the style of style will change naturally with the influence of the environment and the things that happen.

 

February 4, 2024
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