Oxford English Dictionary records that there are 171,476 words currently in use along with an additional 47,000 obsolete ones. Yet sometimes, I still find myself with no words to adequately express my feelings. That was when art came into my life. If words are the known vehicles for communication, the arts are its counterpart that was pushed into the shadows. Today, it is unfortunate that many people no longer respect art anymore: namely, the recent climate activists who destroyed masterpieces and the contemporary norm of audiences talking or texting during concerts are two prime examples. But I believe that this should not be the case, for art is the most genuine mode of expression. It is a process where each choice betrays an emotion and each stroke speaks a word. And it has become an essential part of my life because it speaks for me; it puts words from my heart to my hands and onto the canvas so that when people see it, they will get my message. At the very beginning, art was only a hobby. I remember my four-years-old self having an extraordinary amount of dexterity in my hands and firmly grasping onto pencil, pens, brushes. In elementary school, things became complicated with the introduction of peer pressure. With five of my peers taking extracurricular sketching classes, I aspired to create better art, which could only be more realistic art—what was deemed in China as “good” art. However, when my family moved to the US, I entered a new school where art was taught in a new way: the teachers emphasized creativity and intentions, pushing me to attain the most valuable asset to an artist—my own style. I have only fallen more and more in love with art, especially painting. I love the feel of a brush in my hand, the rhythm of moving in between the palette, the water, and the canvas, and most of all, the way it communicates. My ninth grade year, I fell victim to the silent but deadly grip of anorexia nervosa. The core of the condition resided in my mind and heart: I was lost and could not find my purpose. I was scared and did not know how to navigate my conflicting thoughts. I was angry and frustrated that my family could not understand what I was going through. This whirlwind of thoughts and feelings drove me into despair and further concession to this illness. In the darkest point, I found solace through art. Because I could not talk about all the internal turmoil, I projected all of them onto art. In a piece titled “Metamorphosis,” I depicted my bony back and a healthy back side by side, with a butterfly’s metamorphosis below. I drew white streaks on top of everything that fractures this image into bits and pieces of glass. Lastly, on each side, I drew digital numbers outside the glass fractures going from 69 all the way to 100 to declare my hope to combat this eating disorder. I wanted to shatter the mindset of anorexia nervosa. I knew that when I overcome this period of my life, I will emerge mature, changed, and truly beautiful. From that point on, not only did I recover, I also decided to practice art for the rest of my life. Expression via art freed me from anorexia. I believe that art has more versatility and meaning than the 171,476 words out there. I believe that it expresses, heals, penetrates, and impacts, and so I want my art to be face-to-face communication that touches people’s souls and speaks the unspeakable words.

From a Math Genius, my father, and an English Expert, my mother, came an Artist. I definitely did not get their genes. Since I was four years old, my hands had an extraordinary amount of strength and dexterity; I grasped firmly onto pencils, color pencils, pens—anything. Perhaps that was love at first sight. As I entered elementary school, this love persisted, but it became complicated with the introduction of peer pressure. With five of my peers taking extracurricular sketching classes, I aspired to create better art, which could only be more realistic art—what was deemed in China as “good” art. However, when my family moved to the US, I entered a new school where art was taught in a new way: the teachers taught the mediums and techniques, but they also emphasized creativity and intentions, pushing me to attain the most valuable asset to an artist—my own style. Since then, I have taken more than eight art classes, from Art I all the way to AP. Throughout the process, I have only fallen more and more in love with art, especially painting. I love the feel of a brush in my hand, the rhythm of moving in between the palette, the water, and the canvas, and most of all, the way painting “forgives” me. When I make a mistake, I can always go back and apply another layer on top. The process of artmaking itself makes art a daily obsession of mine. On top of that, I also believe in art’s ability to communicate the most humane history. Texts may be more explicit, but images touch one’s soul. In my twelfth grade year, I stepped into the field of Art History with my research about Titian’s Madonna paintings. I read articles and books about how politics, religion, and culture affected aesthetic tastes and art styles. And vice versa, for it is the piety and virtues communicated by the Marian imagery that inspired a heightened sense of religiosity in Venice. I myself feel a greater love for God when I stare into her eyes, which are full of devotion to her son, Jesus Christ the Savior. I fell in love first with Artmaking and then with Art History. I know that my thirteen-years-long relationship with art is still the beginning. In the years to come, I aim to become an art curator at the MET as well as a freelance artist. I want to be surrounded by countless international treasures; I want to use my passion to not only cherish but also shed a new light on these masterpieces so that others can share my love for art. I have witnessed countless kids who whined and cried in art museums. I believe that the artworks in golden frames should not be something too “mature” for kids; instead, with the right push, they too can see a “virtual reality” of the past and appreciate art’s magnificence. The same applies for people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities. In the meantime, I will continue practicing art. I believe that art is a mirror of the soul. My soul is not Monet’s, nor Da Vinci’s. I believe that my own soul is beautiful and impactful, and I want to use my soul to paint so that my art is a face-to-face conversation and that it can touch other people’s souls. My artistic talents do not resemble either of my parents’, but I definitely inherited their devotion to their works. Many have called me a workaholic when it comes to art, but in my opinion, I am paying art the respect and love it deserves.

“I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” Anne Frank was a teenage girl like myself who lived in seclusion and fear amidst the height of World War II. Yet, the struggles she faced never got to her pure soul, allowing her to leave hundreds of inspirational quotes in her diary for the privileged but miserable teenagers today like me. Her words changed my perception of beauty and art and forever tied me up with this ineffable creature called art. As a young painter, I am lucky to have found solace in art, for like all adolescents, when this caustic world plunged me into darkness at the age of 15, I succumbed to the abyss. For me, it was anorexia. From a bowl of rice to half a bowl to barely five pitiful grains, my weight too descended from 110 pounds to 69 pounds within two months. Anorexia coupled with depression shattered my self-love, which was already sitting on a teeter-totter, so I stopped doing art completely, deeming all of my pieces trash and art a waste of my time. I remember picking back up the pencil once, scratching a few angry lines, and going back to crying again. My parents and friends would start contradicting my perception, exclaiming over my pieces and marveling at my artistic abilities, saying, “Oh my God! How did you do that?” But their words were like incoming balls that I swatted away with the bat called “subjectivity.” Growing up, my passion for art introduced me to the term, “subjectivity,” when I was seven years old. And my seven-year-old self understood. After all, why would almost all art collectors fawn over Andy Warhol’s “masterful” creations when I deem them unnoticeable comic art pieces? Why would someone like Piet Mondrian paint a few lines and color in the squares and sell artworks at skyscraper-high prices? Subsequently, upon hearing compliments for my art, I dismissed them as others’ opinions, which may be valid, but I had my rubric and stood by them. For me, art was an immeasurable idea that tormented me with its freedom. If art is utterly subjective, what then is beauty? I had toyed with this grand and magnanimous dream of creating beauty in this world with my art, but if true beauty is merely in the eye of the beholder, the dream collapses as easily as it was fabricated. The answer emerged in art. Take Monet’s Impression, Sunrise for example, his style is by no means realistic; therefore, old-fashioned people may deem it too “abstract” while contemporary artists may deem it too antiquated. Herein lies the subjectivity of beauty. But, nevertheless, when I gaze upon the painting, as an artist, I notice the uniqueness and subtlety of each hue and tint and shade, how the orange and turquoise blend and crowd the canvas at the same time, and how the painting appears representational five feet away, but when you get closer, it transfers to a conglomeration of dizzying colors. I know that I feel intoxicated as if the rest of the world fades away, and I drown in the strokes and colors. Indeed, beauty is a subjective concept that morphs into a different ruler for each person. But more importantly, it lights up one’s world and banishes misery. In my obsession with its immeasurableness, I had forgotten its more profound attribute, the power to heal. Anne Frank had to savor the bits and pieces to glimpse beauty in her life to remain positive. While for me, not only do I have beauty all around me in the kindness of people and the attractiveness of nature, but I also was gifted with the ability to create beauty with paints and brushes. What then was my excuse to not pick the brush back up and start painting? I remember the first painting I made after being crippled by anorexia; it is a small and simple drawing of Totoro, a character in my favorite animated film of all time. Truly, there was not a whole lot of skill in that painting, but I can say that it is beautiful to me, and every morning, when I look at it, it reminds me that there is beauty in this world, so I choose to forget the miseries. I have never stopped painting ever since. Because I found solace through art, I hope others can taste my experience as well, for the world is full of tears; from genocides to immigration crises to the ongoing pandemic, everyone is scarred in some way or another. I am no orator nor writer, but I am an artist, and an artist can draw, paint, sculpt, and create. With my abilities and my heart, I hope to paint over the darkness of this century and the centuries to come; this may sound like an audacious and ambiguous future project, but it can come to pass, just like how Pablo Picasso’s Guernica healed countless of their external and internal wounds from the Spanish Civil War. I know that it will come to pass for me. I just hope that my art can touch another soul, even if only one other person. This is my big plan, a statement, but it is a statement that I will strive to achieve and bring to reality every day of my life.