“The stories in my work follow the same dreamlike vein as my memories..”
It all started when…
SOULDEGA: How did you get your start in art?
GRACE: The sheer amount of time I spent reading, drawing, and daydreaming on my own as a kid set the foundation for my life as an artist. My family has always backed me in any visual pursuit, which I am lucky and grateful for.
SOULDEGA: We love how surrealistic and whimsical your pieces are. What messages are you conveying in your works, and how do daydreams and fantasy place a role in that?
GRACE: The stories in my work follow the same dreamlike vein as my memories: a tour of scattered houses and rooms over the years, the cobbled-together identity that emerges with adulthood, and trips across oceans and state lines. Nowadays, my subject matter compounds on individuality and freedom as they exist between cultural mores, exploring Asian-American queerness in my twenties, on healing familial wounds, and creating a unique sense of home. Making art is my way of articulating how identity politics impacts our sense of belonging in the world. I want to memorialize our collective experiences, as well as our need to honor and process highly emotional events. In my artwork, I introduce a fantasy world that gives my subjects the space to evolve in their own time. Indulging in fantasy is a powerful way to illuminate an unrepressed appreciation and acceptance of our ever-changing reality.
SOULDEGA: How long does it take you to complete a piece? Can you describe what your creative process looks like?
GRACE: I have a meticulous way of working. It can take twenty hours over a few days, or two months of daily work to finish a piece, depending on its size, how frustrated I am with it, and whatever else is happening in life. My creative process is like nest building. I'll move through the world to harvest content, then go home to weave a new story with what I've picked up. I have a laundry list of painting "topics" inspired by anything and everything—dreams, parties, the scenery on long drives, friends' bedrooms, magazines…there's a lot of intake and rapid-fire content-sifting going on in my head to pinpoint that little detail or feeling that makes me tick.
SOULDEGA: Any artist(s) you can name that directly influenced your style?
GRACE: Oh yeah, I can name a good number of artists who directly influence my style, among them people like Lola Gil, Mu Pan, and Lisa Yuskavage--but I'll share just one anecdote. I still had my student ID after graduation in 2018, so I could get into most museums for free. When Grant Wood's retrospective at The Whitney opened, I went. I spent three stoned, awestruck hours in the museum that day, and returned three more times before the show closed. What drew me into the artist's depictions of rural life was the unsettling mystery behind his landscapes. It was like something unfathomably vast was crouching just below those rolling, pastoral hills, hidden even from the blazing sun. It's the disquieting feeling I got that made me curious about how the artist used symbolism, detailed patterns, and visual glitches in his paintings to stimulate such a reaction. I still think about these things when I start a new piece.
SOULDEGA: Do you have a favorite piece of yours? Is there any work you struggled with creating?
GRACE: I have no real favorite, but one piece I won't part with is my painting entitled Toothache. It depicts two ghostly figures seated in a dimly lit bathroom. Both are in their underwear, and one of them has their fingers in the other's mouth. Their faces are turned towards the viewer, with expressions like, "You shouldn't be here, but...like what you see?" This was a fun painting, and I remember being able to see the finished piece in my head so clearly that completing it was like painting by numbers. I struggle in some way with every piece, but improving my technical skills, readily trusting my intuition, or playing with the scale of my work is always rewarding and fun.
SOULDEGA: What can't you do without when it comes to making a work of art?
GRACE: Teeny, tiny brushes for ultra-fine details.
