Shuangyizhen Hu
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Sep 26
- 3 min read
Shuangyizhen Hu works across painting, printmaking, and illustration, often blending techniques to create layered images that mix the familiar with the imagined. Her subjects come from everyday scenes, time spent outdoors, or personal notes and sketches, and are built up through a mix of hand-drawn and digital processes. Works like “In the shallow” and “Raining window” reflect this quiet, detailed approach, where atmosphere and composition carry as much weight as the subject itself.
Q: "In the shallow" grew out of a snorkeling experience. How do you turn a fleeting underwater encounter into something lasting on paper?
A: When I snorkel underwater, I like to closely observe the sea creatures and the surrounding environment, feeling the movement of the waves and the shifting light. Sometimes, when I swim beneath the surface, I even enter a meditative, almost zen-like state. I don’t enjoy taking photos underwater; instead, I prefer to memorize those fleeting moments and later add imagination as I sketch my drafts, especially for the background, light, color and texture. However, for certain details — like jellyfish or sea angels — that I can’t fully capture in memory, I sometimes look up reference photos to help me draw them more clearly.
In my dry point printmaking, though, I want to find a way to capture that same sense of immediacy and randomness I feel underwater, rather than relying on careful, deliberate drawing.
Q: "Sea cliff" mixes ink, brush, and even a ballpoint pen before adding digital color. What do you enjoy about pushing one technique into another?
A: One of the reasons I enjoy printmaking is its inherent sense of variability and unpredictability. Even in lithography, which may feel less variable than other printmaking techniques, I seek ways to embrace difference through the lines and marks I make, especially when capturing landscapes such as sea cliffs. A brush allows me to create soft, fluid strokes with varying thickness, while a ballpoint pen produces harder, thinner lines. When these marks are transferred onto slate-based paper, the lines and textures shift subtly once again. It is in this transformation — the moment when the print reveals something unexpected — that I find the most excitement in my printmaking practice.
Q: In "Raining window" you paired yellow flowers with a fox. What made those two symbols feel right together?
A: In everyday life, we might glimpse a fox outside the window, perhaps hiding behind a bush. In my work "Raining window," however, I re-imagine this scene as a still life: the fox is no longer real, but a wooden decoration placed on the table beside a bouquet of yellow flowers that bring the spirit of spring indoors. The window itself is fogged and blurred by rain, hiding the outside world from view. Yet this obscurity creates a sense of curiosity, inviting us to wonder what lies beyond the glass on a rainy spring day.
Q: You move easily between painting, printmaking, and illustration. How do you decide which medium carries an idea best?
A: In my artistic journey, illustration has always been my comfort zone — the medium I turn to most naturally for expressing ideas and creative habits. At the same time, I enjoy exploring illustration through mixed media, which allows me to expand beyond its traditional boundaries. Working with painting and printmaking, for example, brings a sense of freshness to my practice, opening up new possibilities and inspiring techniques that I can carry back into illustration.
Q: Nature comes back again and again in your work. What keeps you returning to it as a subject?
A: I see myself as an artist drawn to the wilderness, seeking distance from the hustle and bustle of the city. Yet, living in a crowded city in China, I cannot fully escape urban life. Whenever I have the chance to walk in the countryside or explore wild places, I turn to nature for peace and creative motivation. Sometimes I sketch directly on site, other times I take photographs or rely on memory and instinctive feeling when creating my work. When I focus on nature in my practice, the process becomes a form of art therapy, allowing me to return to those peaceful moments of immersion in the wild.
Q: You describe art as a universal language. What do you hope people feel when they first meet your images?
A: I want my audience to experience an emotional resonance through my work — conveyed by the subject matter, composition, color, and brushstrokes that together form my visual language. My aim is to awaken memories within them, so that encountering my art recalls the feelings they might have had in similar environments, allowing a personal connection to emerge between my work and their own experiences.
