Mingxian Xiang was born in Guiyang, China in 1997. She graduated from Central Saint Martins - University of the Arts London in 2023. Mingxian specializes in using opaque watercolor to do her illustration works. Her work Melancholy Life has been shortlisted in the category Emerging Illustrator of the V&A Illustration Awards in the UK. Mingxian is now active as an illustrator and 2D animator based in London.
''I always would like to be a transmitter of romance, to explore some of the memories that I want to cherish through paintings. We live together with so many intricate living beings, and memory is the container for our consciousness, storing the faintest connection between people and the social environment or the natural environment. People write diaries or take photos, but I want to keep collecting and hoarding short and small memory fragments by illustrating, so that these different emotions can span time and space, telling little stories in a simple but meticulous, ordinary and gentle way.
I specialize in using opaque watercolor as the primary tool for painting, with watercolor, gouache and colored pencil as secondary media. Different from light and airy watercolor works, I want to express a feeling of "this is from a memory", so I will deliberately reduce the saturation and contrast of the painting and blur the edges to create a dreamlike hazy feeling. I’m always more subjective in extracting the emotional tones and emphasizing the memorable details among the complicated information.''
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