To Paint is to Love
"To paint is to love again. It’s only when we look with eyes of love that we see as the painter sees. His is a love, moreover, which is free of possessiveness. What the painter sees he is duty-bound to share. Usually he makes us see and feel what ordinarily we ignore or are immune to. His manner of approaching the world tells us, in effect, that nothing is vile or hideous, nothing is stale, flat and unpalatable unless it be our own power of vision. To see is not merely to look. One must look-see. See into and around." ------Henry Miller
I’ve always had this small habit — appreciating little things. The sunlight coming through a window and leaving soft rectangles on the wall. Noticing flowers growing along the way to school, even if I only know the names of a few. When a girl did her new nails and you tell her they’re pretty, and she smiles. When parents tell you stories from when they first fell in love, and you can tell they still care for each other. A pigeon stealing a piece of bread and confidently walking across the street. Walking through a park and feeling grateful that the weather is nice that day. Finding a strange, funny gif online and having a friend to share it with. Or when someone just looks at you with love.
That’s why Soul is my all-time favourite movie. It reminds me that life isn’t defined by big achievements or dramatic turns, but by the small, ordinary moments that quietly make it beautiful. There’s a line that stays with me — when 22 (main character from the movie who didn't want to live on the earth) finally understands what it means to live and says, “I’m gonna live every minute of it.” That sentence feels like a heartbeat. It captures exactly how I want to approach both life and painting: as a form of living fully, through attention and affection. In another scene, Dorothea tells the story of the fish searching for the ocean, and the older fish replies, “This is water.” That line struck me deeply. It reminds me that the beauty we search for is already around us; it only asks to be seen. Painting, for me, is that act of seeing—recognizing the “water” I already swim in. I don’t paint to chase meaning but to stay with it, to hold the fleeting tenderness of everyday life. Like Soul, my work begins in gratitude: the sunlight on the wall, the warmth of another person’s gaze, the soft hum of an ordinary day.
screenhoot of the movie "Soul"
Henry Miller says, “To paint is to love again… It’s only when we look with eyes of love that we see as the painter sees.” Those words capture exactly what I mean. For me, painting begins with this way of looking: paying attention to what is easily missed. Miller reminds us that the painter’s vision is not about possession but about sharing: “What the painter sees he is duty-bound to share.” I think of painting as that act of sharing—of offering back the tenderness found in an ordinary day. When I paint, I try to look the way Miller describes, to “see into and around.” The smallest moments — the warmth of sunlight, the stillness of my cat, my partner reading quietly beside me — become ways of rediscovering love. They are reminders that the world, when looked at carefully, is already full of affection. To paint, then, is not only to represent what I see but to return love to it — to transform attention into care, and care into colour.
So the "Contemporary Intimism” trend, which first emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, became my research field. It differs from grand narratives or overt drama. It focuses more on warm, emotional, and personal expressions, emphasizing the intimate atmosphere and delicate presentation of emotions in paintings. “The allure of and fascination with the intimate vignettes that make up everyday life have been an ongoing source of inspiration for generations of artists—the way a coffee table or nightstand is arranged, the view from a studio window, the books, plants, and other miscellany that accumulate (or are curated) on a bookshelf (Olsen, Artnet).”
Through Contemporary Intimism, I have come to understand painting as both an act of observation and an act of love. But how can love become a method, a practice, or even a kind of knowledge?
Understand Love, Discover Love, and Practice Love
A key context that shapes my research is Bell Hooks’ book All About Love. Her essays offer a provocative reflection on how contemporary culture misunderstands love — often reducing it to desire, dependency, or sentimentality — rather than recognising it as an ethical and active practice. hooks argues that love is not simply a feeling, but a commitment to growth, honesty, and care. “Love,” she writes, “is an action, never simply a feeling.” That idea has stayed with me, shaping how I think about painting and the everyday. For me, to paint is also to love: it’s an act of sustained looking, of giving time and care to something ordinary, something easily overlooked.
Hook’s essays are a provocative reflection on modern conceptualization of love , pain and emotions — responding to social realities where women are caught in a double bind: either rejecting love for social and economical advancement, or trapped in love’s specious promises and emotional labor that the patriarchy enforces. Instead of a cerebral, calculated evaluation of love and pain, and detaching ourselves from emotive responses, hook’s works call for a deeper, self-reflexive engagement with our emotions, of love and loss, ecstasy and suffering, without losing sight of one’s own need for wholistic growth.
Her writing helped me understand the emotional complexity of my own work. When I paint, I am not only representing tenderness; I am practicing love. Each brushstroke is an act of attention—a quiet moment of giving form to care, to vulnerability, to the desire for connection. Love becomes a method. I first wrote about All About Love during my BA, at a time when I was processing the loss of my cat and a close friend. In those moments of mourning, hooks’ words offered solace — her insistence that “love and loss are not separate, but part of the same continuum of life” (hooks, 2000, p. 163) resonated deeply with me. She writes that “love is an action, never simply a feeling” (hooks, 2000, p. 13), and that understanding helped me to see painting itself as a form of love — a practice of care and presence rather than representation alone. Painting became a way to live with paradox: the concurrence of affection and grief, the persistence of tenderness even in absence. Now, returning to her text years later, I find a new understanding. Love, for me, is not only a theme in art, but the ground on which art is made — an ethical and emotional foundation for how I look, think, and create.
Self Love, Feminism
Lauren Fournier’s understanding of autotheory has shaped how I think about the relationship between life, love, and painting. She defines autotheory as “a practice that reflexively moves between the practices of living, theorizing, and art-making; in autotheory, art-making is thinking” (Fournier, 2018, p. 27). In her words, “autotheory creates new critical stances toward, and multiple ways of approaching and processing, philosophy, theory, criticism, and other related discourses in light of feminist politics and aesthetics” (p. 27).
This description resonates deeply with the way I paint. Each brushstroke feels both affective and analytical — an embodied form of thinking that emerges through the gestures of daily life. Fournier insists that feminist theory is inseparable from lived experience: “to divide theory from practice, and theory from life, becomes even more tenuous” (p. 27). Her idea that “living involves a practice of thinking, and both art-making and living are performative practices that are theorized and become objects of theory and sites of theorizing” (p. 27) captures precisely how I experience painting — as an act that thinks and feels at once.
When I mix colours, trace the light on my partner’s skin, or return to the shape of our shared table, these are not just painterly choices but reflections on intimacy itself. Fournier’s thought opens a space for understanding painting as a form of feminist autotheory — one that allows tenderness, embodiment, and affection to become modes of knowledge. As she writes, “autotheory uses strategies like mimesis, performativity, irony, satire, iteration, self-imaging, embodiment, repetition and ritual to engage with theory… and enact new forms and practices of theorizing” (Fournier, 2018, p. 80).
My own research grows from this lineage. By painting moments of cohabitation, quiet gestures, and domestic rituals, I am tracing the intimate as a critical form — a way of thinking beside and through love. In this sense, my work practices what Fournier calls “a self-reflexive movement between art, life, theory, and criticism — a spiral-like activity” (p. 27), where every act of looking and painting becomes a gesture of both tenderness and thought.
Repeat Love
Sheila Heti’s essay on Pierre Bonnard, “A Common Seagull,” reveals how the small, domestic gestures of life become profound when held in sustained attention. She writes that Bonnard’s painting “is not really aware of the edges of the picture” because, as Peter Doig suggests, he is “painting the space behind the eyes … It is not photographic space at all; it is memory space, but one which is based in reality.” (Heti, 2019) This idea resonated with me when I stood before the canvas, not just to depict what I saw, but to immerse myself in the feeling of viewing.
In her reflection, Heti turns memory, mourning, and repetition into meaningful acts of creation: “There is a quality of duration that must be harnessed … refusing to chase the tsunami of inspiration that comes with each new falling in love, each new city” (Heti, 2019, p. 2). In my painting practice, I seek a similar duration. Instead of chasing newness or dramatic moves, I return again and again to the same living room, the same cat, and the same table. I stay with these scenes as though they are not routine but sacred.
Heti' s words remind me that art can be rooted in everyday life, in the warmth of familiar spaces and the repetitive movements, and still be full of vitality. I depict family scenes not because they are quiet or mundane, but because their tranquility holds the possibility of connection. In this sense, I see painting as a form of testimony: “Both making life and making art are pouring spirit into form” (Heti, 2019, p. 3). My canvases become sites where I look and feel simultaneously, where memory and intimacy become visible.
Through Heti’s writing, I’ve learned to value the ordinary not despite its simplicity but because of it. My work in Contemporary Intimism becomes a continuation of this vision — slow, loving, and observational. A painting isn’t only a record of what happened; it is a way of keeping alive what matters.
Reference artist: Cheng Xinyi
Cheng Xinyi’s paintings have taught me how emotion can exist quietly on the surface — not through overt expression but through rhythm, brushwork, and colour. In Image 1 (Aperitif (開胃酒, 2017), two figures sit together, their bodies close yet emotionally apart. Between them lie a pear and half-empty glasses, yet the real subject is the silence between them — the unspoken tenderness of shared time. The loose, open brushwork and muted palette of pink, green, and plum translate that stillness into paint. As the Sotheby’s catalogue notes, “the subtle body language and quiet tension reveal the complex, inarticulable emotions that ripple beneath the surface of daily life” (Sotheby’s, 2023).A similar stillness pervades Image 2 ( Little Bee, 2020), where a young woman leans into another figure’s shoulder, her gaze unfocused, almost dissolving into air. The turquoise background softens into her skin, erasing the line between body and atmosphere. Cheng describes such moments as attempts to “capture the rhythm of intimacy — the fleeting gestures that reveal emotion without declaring it” (Matthew Marks Gallery, 2020). I find in her work the kind of tenderness I pursue in my own paintings — gestures that hold both love and uncertainty, where care and vulnerability coexist. Formally, Cheng’s use of thin layers, visible strokes, and unpolished edges resonates with my own shift toward unprimed canvas and intuitive mark-making. Her willingness to let paint remain ambiguous encourages me to think of emotion as something fluid rather than fixed. I’m also drawn to how she installs her paintings: in The Swell of Potential (2017) at Balice Hertling Gallery (see Image 3), Cheng hung canvases of varying sizes close together, creating a domestic, almost conversational arrangement. This installation strategy informed my MA show, where I gathered paintings of my partner, my cat, and small still lifes in a loose constellation, allowing them to “speak” across the wall.Cheng’s practice shows that intimacy in painting is not about revelation, but about atmosphere — the space between gesture and meaning. Her figures linger in that in-between: present but elsewhere, calm yet vibrating with feeling. This quiet tension mirrors the emotional rhythm I try to hold in my own work, where painting becomes not a statement but a slow act of care. In Cheng’s world, as in mine, tenderness is not the opposite of strength — it is its form.
Image 1
Image 2
She makes paintings based on love, trust, honesty, sharing, friendship, sincerity, intuition, humor, impermanence, inefficiency, smallness, multiplicity, clumsiness, fantasy, emotion, fertility, misunderstanding, uncertainty, subtleness, harmony, happiness, and perhaps more values that have been confused with the wind disappearing in the night;Heaven and Earth, Yin-Yang, the universe;the undiscovered potential of feminist sensibilities. ------ Cici Wu
Image 3
Reference artist: Zwinab Saleh
I first encountered Zeinab Saleh’s work two years ago at Tate Modern. I remember being quietly moved — her paintings felt like breathing spaces, full of tenderness and restraint. The air around them seemed to hum with patience. This summer, when I saw that she had a new solo exhibition in Shanghai, my attention returned to her practice. I was reminded of why her work stayed with me: the looseness of her brushstrokes, the softness of her colours, the way she allows air and silence to occupy the canvas.
In Web for the Waiting (Image 4), a spider rests on a pale blue surface, its fragile web shimmering through thin layers of acrylic and charcoal. The image is both still and alive, balanced between tension and calm. Saleh’s delicate handling of paint turns fragility into structure — the web becomes a quiet metaphor for time, for holding and release. Her work reminds me that intimacy can exist in stillness, that emotion can be expressed through texture rather than gesture.
In What Do Rituals Do in a World on Fire? (Image 5), a cat rests among patterned rugs, surrounded by warm, translucent light. The scene feels domestic but slightly surreal, as if seen through memory. Saleh paints the atmosphere of care — soft, repetitive, almost devotional. Like Cheng Xinyi, she understands how tenderness lives in ambiguity, in the slow unfolding of a surface.
Her paintings reaffirm my belief that love can be quiet and persistent. As Emily LaBarge writes, Saleh’s work “asks for time—not only to look but to listen, to stay with their slow rhythms” (LaBarge, 2024). That patience is what I seek in my own painting: a way of loving through attention. Saleh’s softness, her gentle palette and unhurried brushwork, has taught me that stillness is not emptiness — it is a form of care.
Image 4
Image 5
To Paint is to Love Again
This year, I sometimes wished I had spent more time in the studio. But in truth, I was painting even when I wasn’t holding a brush. I was fully immersed in love — in its ordinary, daily gestures. Sometimes I spent too much time hugging, but I don’t regret it. I’ve learned that love, like painting, asks for time, presence, and attention.
For most of my life, I lived alone. I used to dream of having a dog, but never had the chance. Then my boyfriend arrived with his Labrador — warm, clumsy, and endlessly gentle. Last winter, I found a cat in Elephant Park. I brought him to the vet and got to know that he had no owner, so I adopted him. Suddenly, I had two companions. Life became louder, softer, more alive. Their presence changed the rhythm of my days — I began to notice how affection can exist without words, how love can take shape in a shared silence, a look, a small daily care. Soon, my boyfriend will return to China for work, and I’ll be alone again. I already know I will miss him — but I also know this quiet time will bring me back to painting. Solitude, for me, is not emptiness but space for imagination.
To paint is still to love again—to stay tender in the face of change, to hold what I cannot keep, and to turn it gently into colour.
Bibiliarphy:
Balice Hertling (2017) Cheng Xinyi: The Swell of Potential. Paris: Balice Hertling Gallery.
Fournier, L. (2018) Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. PhD thesis. York University, Toronto.
Fournier, L. (2021) Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Garb, T. (1994) Everyday Intimacies in French Modernism: The Painter and the Domestic Interior. London: Yale University Press.
Heti, S. (2021) ‘A Common Seagull.’ The Yale Review. Available at: https://yalereview.org/article/common-seagull
hooks, b. (2000) All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow.
Kuenzli, K. (2010) The Nabis and Intimism: Intimacy and the Arts of the Nabis. New Haven: Yale University Press.
LaBarge, E. (2024) ‘Zeinab Saleh: Soft Intervals.’ ArtReview, April 2024.
Miller, H. (1950) ‘To Paint Is to Love Again.’ In: To Paint Is to Love Again. New York: New Directions. Available at: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/01/21/to-paint-is-to-love-again-henry-miller/
Olsen, T. (2024) ‘Liu Peng and Contemporary Intimism: Drawing Emotion from the Everyday.’ Artnet. Available at: https://news.artnet.com
Pixar (2020) Soul. Directed by Pete Docter. Walt Disney Pictures / Pixar Animation Studios.
Images:
Image 1:
Cheng Xinyi (2017) Aperitif (開胃酒). Acrylic on canvas, 105 x 90 cm. Hong Kong: Sotheby’s.
Image 2:
Cheng Xinyi (2020) Little Bee. Acrylic on canvas, 61 x 50 cm. New York: Matthew Marks Gallery.
Image 3:
Balice Hertling (2017) Xinyi Cheng: The Hands of a Barber, They Give In. 2 June–13 July 2017. Paris: Galerie Balice Hertling.
Image 4:
Saleh, Zeinab (2025) Web for the Waiting. Acrylic and charcoal on linen, 170 × 170 × 3.5 cm. Pond Gallery
Image 5:
Saleh, Zeinab (2025) What Do Rituals Do in a World on Fire? Acrylic and charcoal on linen, 170 × 220 × 3.5 cm. Pond Gallery