Congratulations to Yuqian Sun for earning her place as a Finalist in the Boynes Artist Award 9th Edition [Professional Artist category]!

Who are you?

I am Yuqian Sun. I was born in Shenzhen, China in 1997. I started receiving professional art training at a very young age. At the age of 14, My long journey of studying abroad began. After graduating from Idyllwild Arts Academy in California, I earned my BFA degree at the University of Michigan in 2019.

Now I am a Toronto-based artist and teacher.

What inspired you to utilize Painting as a medium?

The most vivid memory I have about my childhood is the scene of me kept drawing. While other kids doodled for ten minutes and then ran off to play, I was able to sit in place and draw for hours. Since then, I have trusted my eyes, hands and intuition with all my heart. For me, traditional painting is the most natural way of expression, just like a mother tongue of mine. The long and challenging journey of learning to tame all those traditional mediums and tools, and the inspiration brought by studying the works of old masters in museums, have helped me to nurture my own inner energy. When my brush touches the paper, that energy explodes into brilliant flows of colors.

Watercolor is the medium I study the most. The emotional intensity that emerges in the poetic flow of translucent color is the reason of my obsession with the medium. When working on representational paintings with watercolor, I imagine capturing a solid form with intangible materials like water and light. I have learnt to be confident yet humble to cooperate with water instead of controlling it. Waterflow calms me down, teaches me to be honest with myself, and brings my inner world onto the paper.

How would you describe your ARTwork?

One thing I found interesting about toy dolls is that their bodies can be put into a lot of postures, but such wide range of mobility couldn’t be achieved without an external force that controls them.The more the modern toy industry evolves, bringing newer and better mechanical structure designs to those bodies, the more they fall into this ultimate contradiction between being still life objects and living things at the same time.

This photo was taken in 2018, during my last year of college. Thinking about all the upcoming challenges, I had been very depressed and feeling lost that year, so I made a lot of doll photography work addressing the feelings of a pitiful farewell and hesitation about the uncertainty in the future. Most of them are dolls interacting with wild plants. This one is my favorite, so I chose to recreate it into a watercolor painting, and I boldly transformed a bright, sunny afternoon scene into this cinematic, intense moment of black and white to further amplify the deep emotions.

Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind your winning work?

I use photography as the primary approach to capture my creative idea. In these photos, you can see the “movement” of these dolls being frozen in images, just like how you capture movements of real humans. However in fact, doll bodies have been static all the time. What I captured was actually the vibrant and rapidly changing natural environment around them——wind, light and the movement of plants. These moments recorded by the camera reflect that poetic connection between every individual’s inner world to the everchanging world around him.

Can you walk us through the technical steps of creating your winning work?

Firstly I covered all the solid black background with indian ink, then I work on all the details and different scales of gray with transparent watercolor. Here are some images that show my painting process.

What do you hope to communicate to an audience with your work?

My goal is to stimulate my audiences’ imagination, creating a narrative that questions: what if dolls are actaully living souls encaged by a silent, immobile shell? I paint dolls surrounded by real flowers, which have flaws but still full of vitality. The contrast between dolls and plants creates this poetic space that makes people re-consider where the borderline of life and lifelessness is.

Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your work?

To me, the major exploration starts from this winning artwork. It has received awards in multiple international art competitions, so I realized the unlimited potential of monochrome watercolor paintings. I kept on creating other doll paintings in this tyle. They might look like regular black and white paintings at the first glance. If you look at the actual artwork in person, you might find that the depth and subtle tone of the grays in my paintings very impressive and unique. That’s because I actually go boldly multi-media with these paintings, and the color palette I actually used is far wider than a regular black plus water.

Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?

I took my dolls with me when I started studying aboard alone at the age of 14. Since then, I taught myself photography to share photos with the doll collector community. I didn’t receive any proessional training as a photographer. All I knew was practicing, photoshoping, and sharing those images.

Before I graduated from high-school, I have become a pretty experienced photographer among the doll collctor community on Flickr. My art teacher in China saw these photos. She was so impressed by how unique a subject matter they had, and she suggested me to officially publish a photography collection.

I spent over a year preparing for the publication.Thanks to my parents who provided absolutely strong support, I got this photography collection titled “Picture Scroll of the Maidens” published when I was 21.In China,it was the very first officially-published photography collection that has dolls as the theme.

Being able to turn a hobby into publication was already satisfying to me. However, I never thought about creating my paintings based on the same subject matter back then. I had this weird belief that if I included a hobby as a part of my career as an artist, it won’t be as reliefing and pure as before.

However, after multiple readers and professional photographers had commented on how my work always had a impactful yet harmonious color palette, which reminded them of classical oil paintings, I started to realize the endless potential of these images. It became my opportunity to let this creativity reach the field of fine art paintings.

I never view myself as a professional photographer because I am clearly aware of how much I lack academic studies in this field, and I have very limited experiences taking photos of other subjects other than my dolls. But I still view this publication a very meaningful success and the most significant turning point in my career. Without my photography work as a solid ground, I won’t be able to create the watercolor or oil paintings you see today.

Can you give us a piece of advice you wish you had known at the start of your career?

Artistic theme and style is such a personal thing to both the artist and the viewer. Don’t struggle to change people’s preferences if you found your art not appreciated by those around you. Be active, go out and find the group of audiences that like your voice instead of sitting at the same place, begging for everyone’s unconditionally recognition of your artwork.

As a finalist, do you have any advice for artists who want to submit to awards, competitions, residencies, etc.?

Don't try to predict the outcome of these art competitions, and don't let the outcome affect your self-esteem as an artist. To me, submitting artworks to competitions and group exhibitions is just an approach to gain feedback from those experienced artists, jurors and gallery owners. to some extent, it can help you to determine what type of artwork might have a wider audience, a higher possibility to be sold. Depending on your career goal and focus at the moment, these feedbacks give you opportunities to adjust your artistic approach and schedule in the future. The results of these competitions could be very out-of-expectation, so never hold too strong of a sense of competition, or believe that you need to change your own creation to imitate those winning artworks.

What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?

I am currently working on the grisalle of my new oil painting. Very challenging yet satisfying. Since I work with transparent watercolors much more often, I really enjoy glazing in oil paintings compare to the alla prima method.

What is your dream project or piece you hope to accomplish?

I have wanted to take on the challenge of building a nice miniature antique-style interior setting, so I can put all 38 dolls in my collection in it, and having them sit together like a real big family. I want to work like what old portrait artists would do back in the day, painting directly from real life instead of using any photo as reference. By creating this huge portrait of my doll family, I will express my gratitude to them for being my Muse for all these years. 

Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists, what is your advice?

Growing up in such a complex era where old concepts kept being challeged, as visual artists, our career field is constantly being hit by new trends: newer and newer forms of multimedia, interdisciplinary art, and the very controversial AI technology. Our definition of innovation is constantly being striked, bringing us the fear that If our creative process is not edgy enough, we are left behind by the art world as failed, out-of-date ones. This fear makes being honest with your inner world something that requires a lot of courage.

In fact, the true uniqueness within someone’s work can only be brought out by an artist's deep acceptance of his own philosophy of life. If the method of expression and source of inspiration of the work is not consistent with the values that they trully agree with, then all innovation becomes no more than self-deceiving.

To view more of Yuqian Sun

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