We had the good fortune of connecting with Ruoxi Hua and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ruoxi, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
Since I started to have memories, drawing has been my hobbies. As a kid, I drew on any surface I can find, paper, newspapers, boxes, walls, furniture… In high school, I got to know a friend who was interested in the arts, and I was exposed to literature, music, and visual art. By that time, I created artworks of my own. They might seem naïve from today’s point of view, but I derived great happiness and fulfillment while making them, and that happiness and fulfillment were what ended up driving me into pursuing an artistic career. However, at that time, my feelings for being an artist was still vague because I was uncertain whether it was my true passion or just an “adolescent phase.”
When I told my parents that I wanted to go to an art school for college, they both gave me a hard “No,” so I ended up in college majoring in biology. However, I still took as many art classes as possible. During my sophomore year, I was in a figure drawing class. The teacher saw my works in class and encouraged me to become an art major. By the end of that semester, I declared a biology and art double major. However, at the same time, I had to take a semester off due to my depression. It was during that several months of recovery when I came to realize that I had the ability to take the wheels of my own life and to decide what I want to do for the rest of it.
After my break, I started taking oil-painting classes. I had never done oil painting before but I aspired to be good at it. My oil painting professor, who has influenced me the most, would talk on and on about painting and throw all these art books at me, and I would read them all. I put extra time working on my painting, instead of staying in the biology lab, as soon as I have spare time. Over time, my passion in oil painting became clear, so I talked to my parents about my plan to go to an MFA program after college. Naturally, they were not very happy at the beginning, and we actually spent months arguing over this matter. In the end, they came to acknowledge my insistence and agreed to my plan. Now I am an MFA Fine Arts candidate at School of Visual Arts.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am an emerging artist who works with painting, printmaking, and drawing. My works are mostly representational, figuring multiple figures in some narratives. During college, the narratives in my works are predominantly surreal and allegorical, often alluding to Western mythology and literature. For example, during the summer after my junior year, I worked on a narrative painting series that takes place on an alien planet. In my senior year I created another drawing series that is themed after the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse in Christian mythology. In this body of work, I am mainly exploring and discussing various forms of violence between individuals or groups of individuals. Since I came to New York for graduate school, my works have gravitated from surrealism towards realism. My most recent work a multi-paneled narrative painting. I fabricated these panels of unconventional shapes, as a compositional play. Instead of having everything in the pictorial space react to the rectangular edge, I allow the edges to also be an organic part of the composition. The idea is to allow my painting to extend itself into the surrounding space. The work depicts four scenes in public/private bathrooms. Through, the narrative, which is more open-ended than in my previous works, I want to portray the feeling of alienation and isolation in the most private moments, which I felt when going to college alone in a foreign country. The subject matter of the bathroom is inspired by several previous bathroom paintings I did in college.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
For me, the most fascinating aspect of New York City is the museums. I will spend at least two days taking my friend to the MET and MoMA. Right now, at MoMA there is a special exhibition of Kathe Kollwitz, one of my favorite printmakers of all time. Apart from art museums, I would also take my friend to the American Museum of Natural History, where we can see fossils of a wide variety of prehistoric creatures. If we are ever tired of museum walks, we can go outside to the Central Park. If my friend is into the Beatles, I will take my friend to the Dakota Apartments on W 72 Street, where John Lennon was shot. Between these museum days, I want to take my friend to the NoHo and SoHo area to eat, shop, and relax. One of my favorite places is a matcha store called Kettl. The shop is really small, but I’d like to sit at the bar and enjoy my matcha slowly. Another store we cannot miss is the Strand Bookstore, whose rare book collection is amazing. If my friend is also a big nerd like me, next to the Strand, we will enter the Forbidden Planet and immerse ourselves with comics and collectibles.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The first person on the top of my head who I want to give a shoutout to is my painting professor in college, John Lee, who changes my way of seeing and helps me solidify my passion for art. When I first went to his office for an advisor meeting, he ended up talking to me about art for an hour. He had a miniature library of art books in his office and so he pulled out several catalogs for me to look at, some of the works, such as those by Richard Diebenkorn, and Hans Hofmann, I found visually challenging at that time. He told me he wasn’t very interested in symbolist paintings, and he believed that the value of a good painting lies in its formal qualities, such as lines, shapes, colors, and movements. He is a colorist and he taught me to see colors and color relationships, and to write visual poetry with them on my canvas, which I am still trying hard to be better at.
Professor Lee is extremely passionate about painting, and he wants us to feel the same. He told me when he was studying at the Pennsylvania Academy, there were figure drawing sessions at 8 in the morning, and he would arrive there at 6 in order to take the best spot. He always encourages us to work hard and keep painting. He constantly thinks about our works and if something occurs to him, he will share his thoughts immediately with us through email. So sometimes we will get these late-night emails with a group of images attached. The most important thing he taught me, above the sensibilities and skills for painting, is his obsession, the obsession to think about art constantly, the obsession to keep working on the works and pushing them further.
During the summer, I stayed on campus and work on my paintings. He told me he had Dream of Light, a documentary of one of my favorite artists Antonia Lopez-Garcia, on VHS tape and asked me if I wanted to watch it. The next day, I saw him carrying his antique VHS machine and speakers, and the two of us watched the three-hour movie together in the classroom. Sometimes, the art building was locked due to the summer break, and he would lock the doors for me. One day, the doors were locked again. So I messaged him, and right after he told me he was on his way, it started pouring. I was worried and I tried to tell him not to come over before the rain stop, but he did not receive my message. About ten minutes later, he showed up on his bike, and by the time we entered the art building, we were both dripping water.

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