XIAO Fine Art
Art, Painting, Modern

Transcript

Ryan Yan: I’m Ryan Yan,  my art business is Xiao Fine Art 

Voice Over: Ryan’s switch to fine art allowed him to explore identity and his sense of self. 

RY: Xiao is my birth name in Chinese. It means courage. I originally chose it because I needed to adopt an alter ego of that artist who paints boldly without fear whatsoever. I've gone by Ryan Yan as my artist name, which is the name that is very near and dear to my heart, a lot more frequently now, now that I'm a full-time artist.  I don't necessarily need that alter ego to get me into the zone. 

For me, it's all about being in the moment and tapping into the flow. So the first time I painted an abstract, I obviously wasn't any good at it, but I know I was really present and every single cell of my body was alive, and I just felt this joy. I think I was probably smiling the whole time and it really is like a dialog back and forth with canvas because it starts out blank. You use a brush, you use some color, you put something on it. Then now you have color on the canvas. I typically, I'll come in with an intention like, okay, I am feeling pretty chaotic today and I want this to be pretty Zen feeling but there's the creative energy kind of takes on its own life form. I've heard my work being described as charismatic chaos before, which I like. For me, it's really how turbulent life can really be. I often tie together my work at the very end with simple geometry. I use circles a lot. I use lines like really straight, hard lines. I use ellipses a lot, the  infinity symbol, and it compositionally ties together the chaos and just shows kind of the flowing energy of things as we try to, as we are like in life, experiencing life, so to speak. 

So yeah, I think what's really important to me is just tapping into an authentic flow. And if I'm not feeling it, giving myself the patients really to take a step back and then also get back into it and then not feeding into too much negative, like the really negative energy doesn't flow out nicely.

VO: Ryan has been able to explore cultural identity as well, mixing the history of Western and Eastern art. 

RY: An interesting thought experiment that I've been using in my most recent work is “What if Abstract Expressionism started as an Eastern movement and not a Western movement?” Think about okay, what are some Eastern techniques such as calligraphy, abstracted? What would that look like? Like, what is the essence of calligraphy, really? And that kind of emotion? Or if I look at some sumi landscape paintings, like, okay, what is the essence of why this works? And so being able to abstract that on canvas has been something that's really important to me. More specifically, as my work evolves and I explore. 

VO: With as knowledgeable as Ryan is about abstract expressionism, you may not expect his background.

RY: I come from a corporate background and I've got my MBA. I've lived a certain type of life for the majority of, I call it my professional career. And it wasn't until about six months ago that I started doing art full-time. Maybe 15 to 20 weekends out of the year I set up a tent with my 30 feet of gallery space in my own little personal gallery and show people my work and I’m able to engage directly with potential customers.

At its best, events can be pretty incredible because as I'm able to directly interact with people that are interested in my work. And so I get to watch people come up to my booth or even just glance at the art and then do a double take, come in, look at the art longer, have a conversation with me.

VO: But it isn't all about making money. Ryan has found a true joy in sharing his love of art. 

RY: As an artist, of course, I want to be able to sell my work and that's incredibly important for me to make a living, but I didn't get into art just solely sell my work, if people are able to experience it, live in person and see it then that gives me quite a strong sense of satisfaction. 

Isn't that how,  like life is so beautiful and interesting that way, right? Where it's like you can’t appreciate something one day, but something opens up your eyes and it’s just it's a whole new world. It's a whole new universe for somebody to be able to explore. I think it's a beautiful thing. 

I just had a couple of acceptances into some art festivals here in Atlanta, all using Eventeny as the platform.

VO:  And we're loving having Ryan Yan and Xiao Fine Art here at Eventeny, connecting inspired artists with the very best events.