ARTEXPRESS Interviews 2020 - Lauren Xuan Wang 
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LAUREN XUAN WANG: Hi, my name's Lauren. And I studied visual arts at James Ruse Agricultural High School. 
So my body of work is a series of charcoal drawings. So at the very start, you've got very clear-cut, detailed faces. And I actually use references of my friends to draw the faces. 
But as they progressed along the piece of paper, I guess, as they progressed along the drawing you'll find that the details become smudged and blurred. And eventually they converge into one big face, and then they spread out into these ghost-like faces. So you can't really tell the thought the details. And they all seem like homologous features, I guess. 
If I draw a bunch of detailed faces with really unique features and really unique aspects about them and I condense them into one big, mask, ghostly thing, and they come out as really homogeneous-looking faces and you can't really distinguish between them, and they converge and they just become the same thing-- these ideas of social homogeneity, how everyone's losing their individuality with the faces with the 'Simpson's' conveyor belt, I just took it from there. 
I chose charcoal, which is quite unforgiving in that it's very hard to erase from the paper once you've actually put pencil to paper. So once you've got that stroke on, it's really hard to erase it without it being very obvious that you've already done something to it. 
I enjoyed the challenge. And also, I knew that going large scale would have the visual impact because it's just not the same with an A1 piece of paper versus an A4. 
Also, just it's really fun, like going into the paper and then racing back to the back of the classroom, looking at it from far ahead, and then going back in. It was very physical. But I enjoyed that. It was just a very nice experience. 
With anything you do, it's very important to get a sense of validation when you're trying to complete something, especially as important as your major work. So definitely, the support I got from my teachers and my friends was so important, because it just kept me going. 
I think I resubmitted my work at least five times. And it helped me to learn how to take feedback into consideration, but also merge feedback that I might not have liked with my own ideas. 
Throughout my whole, well, also artistic career, I've always been inspired by Egon Schiele and his expressive portrayal of the human body. And his work is just really free flowing, in my opinion. Really inspired by Egon Schiele's treatment of the human body and his treatment of facial expressions. 
Another artist that really inspired me during my process was Adam Riches. And I did admittedly find him on Instagram. But he is an amazing artist. He does line work of faces. And he just does these really quick ballpoint pen sketches that really inspired me when I was actually doing my own charcoal pencil sketches. 
So if I had to give advice to visual arts students now, I would say to just persevere with what you have so far and trust your own ability to create a beautiful piece of work, because you have that talent and you have that skill. 
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