Hsin Tien is a painter, whose works are concerned with the surrounding life, exploring how fragments of memory resonate with current emotions, and deeply delving into how memories influence her perception of objects.
Originally from Taiwan, Taipei, Tien’s painting themes consistently focus on the landscapes surrounding everyday life. Before undertaking her MA in Fine Art at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, she completed a BA in Fine Art, majoring in Western painting, at Tunghai University in Taichung.
Through years of academic art training, Tien’s work has come to reflect a blend of influences—a soft, washed quality of acrylics infused with the blurred sensibility of traditional ink painting and the refined techniques of Nihonga. The gentle, grounded, and quiet strength is clearly reflected in the overall atmosphere of Tien’s work. Yet when it comes to color choices, she transforms her diverse life experiences into bold expressions—freely playing with highly saturated colors that dance across the canvas.
When Tien paints with acrylics, her work often carries a gentle, hazy feeling—colors are light yet layered, creating a quiet, almost dreamlike atmosphere, as if caught between sleep and wakefulness. Rather than being dominated by a single strong color tone, Tien’s work unfolds through layers of color, gradually built up to create a world that feels surreal and elusive—like a fleeting vision that hovers just beyond reach.
In contrast, when oil pastels set the tone, childhood memories of scribbling with crayons naturally surface on the canvas. Though both worlds are equally colorful, the oil pastel pieces reveal a more childlike expression—purely playing with colors, projecting the world once seen through youthful eyes during the most innocent moments of memory, and bringing that vision vividly into the present.
During her time studying in the UK, she has not only captured many of the uniquely British sceneries that have felt novel to her, but also has documented emotionally stirring moments while traveling through Europe.
Despite the novelty of these unfamiliar first encounters, they often carried an inexplicable sense of familiarity. For instance, encountering a lone bench on a vast, boundless prairie—one that uncannily resembled the one in her grandmother’s backyard—could instantly draw her into a whirlpool of memories, forging a magical bridge between present and past, the universal and the intimate.
Tien excels at discovering such connections among different scenes—finding a droplet of memory in a sea of unfamiliarity. Perhaps it stems from a strong sense of homesickness, or maybe it’s the mischievous play of memories in her mind. This game of seeking belonging in new environments, transforming them into blurred, fantastical landscapes that lie between imagination and reality, gradually has become a central theme in Tien’s creative journey.
Website: hsin19815.wixsite.com/hsin-tien
Instagram: @hsin.x.i.n
Email: [email protected]