Xiye Wu | Between Stillness and Becoming
Xiye Wu is a contemporary artist working primarily with mineral pigments. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she studied from 2018 to 2022.
Her practice is inspired by quiet landscapes, soft light, and the subtle rhythms of the natural world. Flowers, trees, water, wind, and changing seasons often become starting points for exploring the inner sensations awakened by nature.
For Xiye, plants and landscapes are more than subjects to be observed. They offer a way of sensing our own presence within the world.
Her paintings often linger between stillness and movement. A landscape may appear calm, yet light continues to shift, air moves through leaves, temperatures change, and plants quietly grow. Through layered mineral pigments, softened color, and atmospheric textures, she captures this gentle balance between what seems still and what is always becoming.
This quiet, grounded sense of presence has become an important source of her work.
Finding the Self Through Nature
In Xiye Wu’s paintings, nature becomes a way of looking inward.
Rather than approaching the landscape as an external scene to be simply represented, she is interested in what happens when we become aware of ourselves as part of the surrounding world.
Plants, light, wind, air, and time all remain in motion, even when everything appears still.
Through observing these subtle changes, Xiye explores a quieter question: how can we find a sense of steadiness while everything around us continues to shift?
Her paintings hold this tension between movement and stillness, allowing the natural world to reveal something more intimate about our own prese
Material, Light, and the Passage of Time
The sensory experience of the physical world plays an important role in Xiye Wu’s practice.
Light, wind, temperature, and the growth of plants are translated into visual rhythm, color, texture, and surface.
Mineral pigments are especially important to this process.
Derived from natural materials, mineral pigments possess weight, texture, and a sense of permanence. Their layered surfaces carry traces of time, allowing the material itself to become part of the meaning of the work.
For Xiye, this quality resonates with her interest in existence: something that can feel both enduring and fragile, stable yet continually transformed by its surroundings.
Exploring the Language of Materials
Alongside mineral pigment painting, Xiye Wu continues to explore the possibilities of different media, including ceramics and tempera painting.
Each material carries its own texture, method of formation, and relationship with time.
By working across different media, she approaches material and perception from multiple directions, searching for the surface, texture, and process that best express a particular feeling.
This ongoing exploration opens new possibilities for bringing traditional materials into a contemporary visual language.
For Xiye Wu, making begins with sensation. Material becomes a way of giving form to light, atmosphere, movement, and the quiet experience of being present in the world.
