Misha builds up soft pastel tones in multiple layers, producing a distinctive, filter-like color quality. By applying thin, layered acrylic washes and subtle blurring to soften contours, she creates a sense of temporal depth. This piece is an interview exploring the secrets of Misha’s color use and her path as an artist.

- Could you tell us about your starting point as an artist? What were the initial influences, such as books, paintings, or childhood events, and how did they lead you to the style you have today?

Misha: I think it comes down to personal experience. I did not grow up with access to art in a formal sense; I simply liked drawing. Even though I had that inner passion and longing, my environment made it difficult to cultivate it. After finishing my undergraduate studies, I decided to start working. At that time, I had already made a choice to give up painting, to focus on my job and earn money.

But throughout that period, there was always an inner struggle and a sense of regret. Those feelings grew like a snowball, becoming stronger over time. I constantly felt something pulling at me, so I eventually decided to resign, move to Beijing, and apply to art school, crossing over into fine art from a different field.

It is hard to define a single starting point for becoming an artist. It was not one specific event, but rather countless moments I could not ignore. These experiences did not give me a ready-made painting style; instead, they became a point of departure. Through study and practice, I have continued to search, filter, and gradually move closer to a visual language that truly belongs to me.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- What are your primary sources of inspiration? Do they come from the external world, or more from your internal thoughts?

Misha: My inspiration does not come purely from either the “external world” or “internal reflection,” but rather from the continuous friction and permeation at their boundary. Much like the sense of “in-betweenness” in my images, inspiration emerges from this gray zone where inside and outside intersect.

What the external world provides are triggers for perception. The cultural and familial environments I grew up in, along with the life experiences they shaped, have left concrete imprints on me. These are not inspiration itself. Rather, when I encounter the world through the bodily memory formed by these experiences, those accumulated sensations are instantly activated. They prompt me to continuously generate new thoughts and feelings within.

What truly gives rise to inspiration is the “chemical reaction” that occurs when these two realms meet. In that moment, a fissure opens between the inner and the outer, a space that belongs neither entirely to the world nor entirely to myself. When I do not deliberately distinguish between inside and outside, this in-between zone naturally begins to surface.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- How does a work typically come into existence, from the first spark of an idea to the finished piece?

Misha: The creation of a work is never a smooth, linear process. In almost every piece I encounter a brief period of blockage. Before I begin painting, I usually have a rather vague sensation. Because this feeling is so indistinct, and because completing a work requires a certain amount of time while the sensation itself is momentary, capturing it becomes particularly difficult.

As a result, in this process I continuously struggle, resist, listen, and respond, gradually approaching that “feeling.”

- Are there any specific techniques, materials, or steps in your process that are essential to your work?

Misha: In my creative process, I continuously develop and refine my own methods according to the needs of each painting. For example, in terms of materials, I choose acrylic because I need a translucent, layered effect that requires repeated application of many layers. Most of the color fields in my work are not produced by a single application of paint, but rather by multiple layers of color accumulating on the canvas to form new tones.

Water-based materials dry relatively quickly, and once diluted they become more transparent, which better serves the visual requirements of my work. Technically, I often use a brushing and blurring method, moving back and forth across the surface. Each layer of color must remain sufficiently light and thin, without leaving clear edges or visible brushstrokes. However, the degree of diffusion is not uniform everywhere; it needs to be controlled according to the rhythm of the composition.

In some works, I also use solid oil pastels and colored pencils for the final detailing stage.

Close Up

- The unique, filter-like color palette in your work feels very contemporary. How do you decide on these specific hues to represent your memories or experiences?

Misha: The final tonality of the image is almost never achieved through a single instance of mixing color. It emerges from the accumulation of multiple layers of color. These tonal qualities are a kind of “tactile sense” formed through the gradual sedimentation of my memory and experience in visual form.

They are not entirely what the colors were “at that moment,” nor are they purely what I feel “now,” but rather the result of the two blended together over time. Through long-term practice, they become a kind of bodily memory.

They are also the natural outcome of the temporality of memory, a sense of cultural in-betweenness, the experiential nature of the image, and my continuous questioning of my own perceptions, all working together.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

- What is currently capturing your interest, and how do you see your work evolving in the near future?

Misha: What particularly attracts me is the exploration of my own sensitivity, because in painting, sensation often arrives before language. In daily life, countless trivial matters and interpersonal relationships constantly drain this sensitivity and weaken one’s internal field of energy.

Sensitivity is not something I already possess in a fixed form; it is a state I need to enter during the act of creation. I need to shift into a mode of reception, which means I must “cultivate” this state, leaving time, space, and mental conditions that are not intruded upon. In doing so, I try to establish a new perspective through which to approach each act of creation.

This perspective is no longer about “what goal I need to achieve” or “what stable method I need to establish,” but rather revolves around how to better construct an inner territory, how to enter it, and how to trust that state.

Because what matters to me is not how complete a work appears, but whether a genuine sense of dialogue with the image emerges during the process of creation.

Whitestone Gallery Taipei

Misha, by letting color speak for itself, visualizes the subtle fluctuations of memory and sensibility. The materials and layered surfaces function not merely as showpieces but as devices that accumulate the passage of time and cultural memory. Viewers project their own memories into the spaces between fragmentary forms and ambiguous tones, and through the works weave out their individual narratives.

The Fissure of Perception: LI Manjin, MENG Yangyang, Misha