Painting Life One Line at a Time: Leigh Wen Sets Her Own Course

Leigh Wen was born in New Tai­pei City’s ­Yingge District in 1959. Her parents were potters who later opened a shop selling books and stationery. Wen spent her childhood surrounded by ceramics, and books on culture and the arts. As the eldest child, Wen was tasked with taking her younger siblings to after-school art classes when her parents were busy. Casual sketches and cut-paper crafts were the gateway to her own later career in art.

Wen attended Tsai ­Hsing Middle School and the Tai­pei Municipal ­Zhong Shan Girls’ High School. In those days, painting provided her with a measure of freedom within a rote educational system, and a respite from the pressure for academic success. She found the space to express herself in the arts, and resolved to pursue them professionally.

Air Mural, 305 x 915 cm, 2001. Leigh Wen’s language of scraped lines gives her paintings visual depth and a certain moodiness.

The move to America

After completing high school, Wen enrolled in the Chinese painting division of the National Academy of the Arts (now National Taiwan University of the Arts), where she studied ink-wash painting. Her work there was recognized with awards in both Taiwan and Hong Kong in her second year of college. She traveled to the US in 1983, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Washington State University, and then Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the State University of New York.

Wen was new to oil painting at the time of her move to the US. There, she began by learning the basics, such as stretching a canvas. She lived a varied life in New York, taking in the city’s window-display, interior, and stage design work, and having her horizons broadened by its rich cultural life.

Peony IV, 173 x 186 cm, 2016. Leigh Wen’s language of scraped lines gives her paintings visual depth and a certain moodiness.

“Scraped” paintings

When you first see a painting by Wen, you can’t help but be drawn to the powerful cut lines filling the canvas. Her Earth, Air, Fire, Water series, which is currently on exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tai­pei, provides classic examples of her work. Artists typically layer lighter colors atop a dark background, but Wen uses lighter colors as the base. After she’s built up sufficiently thick layers of paint, she cuts lines into the still wet paint with a stylus, scraping paint away to reveal the lighter colors underneath. As dark becomes light, it creates color gradients along the seemingly irregular lines, each of which ­contributes to her vision. Her flames shift with the direction of the wind, and the color of her water is affected by the color of the night. Wen’s works depict things she has seen in the real world. They are abstract expressions of concrete phenomena, Eastern ink-wash scenes rendered in Western oils.

Wen shows how the temperature of the seawater and the light reflecting off it bring out different colors in its surface. Her scraping technique captures the momentary changes in the colors of the surface, incorporating reflections from the waves into the deep blue of the sea. Her powerful lines bring the flat surfaces of paintings to life, giving them depth and making them appear to move.

She spent nine months working on her first depiction of water using her oil-scraping technique, 1996’s 16-meter­-long Water Mural. She went on to make subtracting dark from light her signature technique and through it earned a place in the international art community. In the years since Water Mural, Wen has been invited by the US Department of State to exhibit her paintings in 13 US embassies, including those in Jordan, Singapore and the Philippines, and to work as a cultural ambassador for contemporary art in Botswana, Denmark, Poland and Malaysia.

Having cast off the constraints of traditional techniques, the prolific Wen worked for a time on huge oil paintings and on canvases mounted on oval stretchers. In 2014, she created of a series of “scraped” flower paintings on canvases mounted to flower-blossom-shaped ­stretchers­. The series consists of images of beautiful ­peonies, elegant white ginger lilies, and gentle pansies from her own garden, depicted in lively, saturated colors that convey the power of feminine warmth and tenacity.

Water Mural, 305 x 1524 cm, 1996. Leigh Wen’s language of scraped lines gives her paintings visual depth and a certain moodiness.

Setting sail

Wen loves trying new things, and has even used wine crates as a medium. This year’s Side Track series consists of “incidental” works created in reaction to a typhoon.

Concerned that last year’s Typhoon Soudelor would damage the paintings at her Taiwan studio, Wen, who was in Taiwan at the time, asked a friend for wine crates to hold them. She was then struck by an idea: using the brand logos, letters, and images on the crates as the elements for new pieces. She integrated those elements with others that included earth, air, water, fire, sailboats, newspaper collages and even metal-foil grape leaves to create works with a hint of Pop Art influence.

We wonder whether Wen’s many years in the United States and her participation in cultural and artistic exchanges around the world have left her feeling unmoored. But she is no tiny boat adrift on a boundless sea. Like the sailboats of her recent paintings, which navigate mountains, waters, raging fires, and the universe itself, she is the author of her own fate, traveling freely through different landscapes. Having sojourned abroad for years, she has crafted her own stage within the international art community. Now, after many years working in media ranging from ink-wash to prints and oils, Wen is devoting more of her time to sculpture. We expect the endlessly creative Wen to create many more wonderful new pieces as she continues her journey through the arts.

Leigh Wen traces one careful line at a time, crafting large, powerful oil paintings.

photo by Jimmy Lin

(Siberian Iris 126 X 165 cm, 2015 )

Audiences are drawn to Wen’s wine-crate works, which integrate elements ranging from earth, air, fire, and water to sailboats. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

Leigh Wen has served as a cultural ambassador for the United States, traveling to Africa for exchanges on contemporary art.

Leigh Wen’s flower paintings evoke the warmth and determination of the female artist. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

Leigh Wen’s travels have provided rich material for her art.

Leigh Wen found inspiration for new work in the labels, logos and lettering of wine crates. Shown here: Side Track 6, 25.8 x 32.5 cm, 2015. (courtesy of Wellington Collections)