Painting as an Extension of the Self

I love painting, and I only paint what I like. I only start painting when I know I will enjoy the process. That impulse is a quiet kind of desire, not driven by reason and not something that needs to be explained. The feeling of the brush pushing the paint and the way the colour flows across the canvas bring me into a particular state of focus. It is just like how people do different things to relax, such as exercising, cooking, or popping bubble wrap. And I happen to be kind of good at painting, so it becomes another option for me. Painting allows me to momentarily escape from everyday life, just like meditation.

Painting is an entirely personal thing for me. I do not try to convey any particular emotion or feeling through my work. It is my emotions that influence the way I paint. Therefore, painting is not something I use to express myself, but an extension of my own existence. Just as Alexandra Eldridge mentioned in an interview, “Whatever is occupying my psyche, my innermost self, will show up on the canvas” (Eldridge, 2017). When I have a canvas, I have the right to create a space of my own. I love sunsets, rainy days, cakes, strawberries, and a soft, comfortable bed. My intuition and sense of attraction draw different things to me, and I bring them together to form an image. This process feels like creating a psychological sandbox, where the unconscious self can become visible through symbols and images. As Dora M. Kalff explains in Introduction to Sandplay Therapy, sandplay provides a space that is both free and contained. Such a space allows unconscious contents to be shaped and experienced safely, enabling a person to approach a sense of inner wholeness. Kalff also points out that fantasy becomes truly creative only when it is confined within a defined form, and that freedom gains meaning through limitation (Kalff, 1986).

The only difference is that the purpose of sandplay is to approach the participant’s inner state, allowing them to see their repressed or unconscious emotions. My original intention in painting, however, is not to better understand myself or to observe my own subconscious. It is simply that my way of working happens to make my paintings readable as a form of self-projection. Painting, for me, is not an analytical process but an open space that allows the self to exist. Similar to Kalff’s idea about sandplay, what matters is the process of shaping and experiencing rather than explaining. Through the act of making, inner tensions can quietly find release, and emotions become something that is lived and felt instead of being verbally analysed (Kalff, 1986).

I do not actively analyse my own work, but I am aware that there is an inner logic between the directions I am drawn to and the painting processes I am willing to experience repeatedly. Even though my practice is not driven by the need to understand, the sense of attraction that guides it can still be analysed.

What I’m Drawn To: Sweetness and Decay, Time and Remembrance

To better enjoy the act of painting itself, I do not decide on a theme before I begin. However, within an academic environment, purely enjoying painting inevitably makes me worry about certain issues, such as whether my style is consistent or whether my works share the same theme. When I talked about these concerns with my classmates, their response was that my paintings already look unified anyway, saying, “You can tell it’s yours at first sight.” This also seems to support the idea that my painting process is similar to creating a psychological sandplay. I never try to maintain a kind of consistency, and I have been constantly experimenting with different materials and techniques. But since the creator is me, the works inevitably become projections of my inner self, and therefore appear unified.

I find that although I paint the things I like, I never let them appear in their perfect form on the canvas. Those symbols are not only images. I genuinely enjoy eating cakes and strawberries in my daily life and find them visually pleasing. Yet I am not interested in simply portraying their beauty. In my paintings, cakes collapse, strawberries decay, and jam flows like blood. I begin to wonder whether what attracts me is the sweetness of the jam itself, or its blood-like colour and texture. Why is it that I love the look of cakes and strawberries, yet choose to destroy them in my paintings. Perhaps decay and sweetness are meant to coexist. Fruits are sweetest when they are fully ripe, but that also means they are close to rotting. What draws me in are those moments on the edge, when something feels almost alive in its imperfection. Julia Kristeva refers to this simultaneous feeling of attraction and repulsion toward blood and impurity as “abjection”. This emotion arises at moments when boundaries become blurred, such as between “life and death”, or “the body and filth”. For example, blood evokes disgust because it reminds us of the fragility of life, yet within that disgust lies a strange sense of fascination, for it also reveals that life is still in motion (Kristeva, 1982). This explains that my fascination with images of decay, collapse and mould is in fact a form of mourning for what was once beautiful.

As I begin writing this reflection, my journey of studying here is also coming to an end. Since the start of this term, I have been keeping myself busy, making the most of every possible moment in the studio and workshop. Yet I still feel a sense of sadness about the approaching farewell, a feeling that has been with me for quite some time. But I do not resist it. I think if every ending makes me feel this kind of pain, it only proves that those times were truly joyful. The sadness that comes early simply reminds me to feel the remaining days more deeply. I have always believed that without pain, we would not truly cherish happiness. Emotions are strongest only when there is conflict and contrast. This way of thinking also influences my painting. Perhaps gentle and beautiful images can be comforting on their own, but only the fragile and transient ones are truly captivating. That is why I keep portraying things that are delicate and fleeting in my work. Maybe it is because experience has taught me that intense happiness often comes with deep reluctance to let go, and I find myself enjoying all of it.

It was also this term that I began painting clouds, which has been a very soothing process. I have many photos of sunsets on my phone, and I think I am always drawn to the sky and clouds because of their constant change. I take many photos to capture those moments that will never return, not only to preserve the images but also to hold on to the feelings that came with them. As for why I feel the urge to paint them, even when it is just copying from a photo. I think it might be because I am not satisfied with only appreciating them with my eyes. When I paint from a photo, I have to think about space, what is sky, what is cloud, what is behind, and what is in front. The process of building the volume and texture of clouds with a brush makes me feel that my distance from them is the same as my distance from the canvas. Perhaps to the audience there is little difference between my painting and the photo, but to me it is a ritual of reuniting with a moment from the past. The act of painting is a process of re-experiencing.

Rebecca Partridge also described her experience of painting clouds in an interview with Financial Times: “I want the works to connect us with an embodied experience of being in the landscape, something very in the moment, present,” she said. “Perhaps something akin to a meditative experience.” (Gavin, 2025).

Language is Always Slower than Intuition

When the self is dissected and analysed, I find that language and logic do not help me feel more deeply. Instead, these descriptions make me feel distant. I can feel my emotions intensely, and I can enjoy every painting process, but I cannot remember the words that describe them. They may be able to explain the motives behind my emotions and creation, but I cannot feel the language itself.

Just like reflection has made me realise that the reason I want to paint sunsets is because painting allows me to revisit beautiful moments from the past in another way. But such understanding does not make my next sunset painting more enjoyable, nor could I ever tell myself before painting again, “Let’s relive that sunset!” In fact, since I have written this down, if I get distracted by this strange thought the next time I paint… I am almost sure I will be. This makes me believe even more that intuition and feeling do not need to be explained through language. If I can already move from intuition directly to the image, then any analysis or understanding I once had will not take part in my next practice. This belief also resonates with Wassily Kandinsky’s reflections in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), where he writes that the ideal of art cannot be described by theory. In true art, theory follows practice rather than precedes it, and everything begins with feeling (Kandinsky, 1912). For Kandinsky, the inner necessity of creation cannot be measured or defined, which echoes my own understanding that intuition always precedes language. For me, intuition is clear, but language is vague.

The Anxiety of Exposure

My resistance to over-interpreting my work comes not only from the sense that linguistic analysis disrupts the immediacy of intuition, but also from a fear of self-exposure. Although my paintings, much like a psychological sandplay, have already revealed what lies in the subconscious, I feel safe as long as I do not analyse or interpret them. Freud refers to this psychological defence mechanism, through which desires, impulses, or emotions that cannot be directly expressed are transformed into socially acceptable creative activities, as “sublimation.” In this process, pain, desire, and anxiety do not disappear but are instead manifested through art, thought, or labour in an aesthetic or cultural form (Freud, 1930). And this is not only related to desire and anxiety. I feel uneasy about exposing any kind of emotion, it is also the same in my everyday life. I find emotions very complicated. I can sense every subtle shift in my own feelings, and I can also see how those shifts might be understood by others and how they might leave traces in relationships. That is why expressing emotions feels dangerous to me. Once emotions are spoken, they no longer belong to the individual but enter the eyes of others, to be understood and consumed. In daily life, I try to control how emotions are presented, but because painting is indirect and ambiguous, the expression of the self becomes more honest. So when I am asked to analyse my work through language, that clarity feels like exposure.

Many artists resist explaining their materials and techniques, and some even feel angry when people care only about how they paint rather than why they paint that way, as if those people only want to copy their methods. But for me, talking about techniques and materials makes me feel safe. I even see them as something outside of “painting” itself. Because it does not touch upon what lies beyond the surface of the painting. I also do not expect others to be curious about the themes of my paintings, because my works are not created to convey specific emotions or ideas. As for why someone likes or dislikes them, or what kind of resonance they may feel, that belongs to them. Naturally, everyone’s response to a painting is different, and even if the artist’s intention is made clear, the audience will still have their own understanding. For me, my painting ends the moment I finish it. Even when I look at it again, I am only a viewer.

Painting is not a Conclusion but a Continuous Experience

When I pause my practice to write reflections, I often talk about the importance of intuition and freedom. They are real, but they are also an idealised state. I cherish the moments when I can work freely, yet I always find myself anxious about the final outcome. For example, when I was making the work for my degree show, I couldn’t truly relax. I am constrained by various aesthetic standards, and I do not truly wish to subvert them. So I have always painted in a space between restraint and enjoyment. Just as my images exist between sweetness and decay, my feelings linger between clarity and obscurity. I create within the boundary, and I exist within it. According to Territories of Art Therapy (2013), Deleuze and Guattari describe art as a space of sensations and intensities, where both the artist and the viewer are involved in an ongoing process of becoming. Therefore, painting is not a conclusion, but a process that constantly brings me back to feeling and to the body. As for the struggles and self-negotiations within the process of painting, they may not belong to an idealised state, yet they embody the most genuine relationship between me and my practice. It allows me to keep breathing between clarity and obscurity, and to reaffirm that I am still here.

Images

Xijia Zhao, Damp Dreams, 60 × 80cm, 2024

Xijia Zhao, Cloying, 2025

Xijia Zhao, Untitled, 2025

References

Alexandra Eldridge (2017). ‘”Dreams are my sustenance.”‘. Interviewed by Christina Im. HalfMystic. 30th November. Available at: https://www.halfmystic.com/blog/alexandra-eldridge (Accessed 3 November 2025).

​Kalff, D.M. (1986). ‘Introduction to Sandplay Therapy’, Journal of Sandplay Therapy, 1(1), pp.9 –15. Available at: https://www.sandplay.org/jst-article/introduction-to-sandplay-therapy/ (Accessed: 3 November 2025).

Kristeva, J. (1982) ‘Approaching Abjection’, in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1–31. Available at: https://thepoeticsseminar.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/approaching_abjection.pdf (Accessed: 3 November 2025).

Gavin, F. (2025) ‘Meet the artists with their heads in the clouds’, Financial Times, 20 June. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/668f4c02-e78d-4af1-9087-238fdf880c3a (Accessed: 4 November 2025).

Rebecca Partridge, 30 Days Sky Studies, 2018 – Ongoing. Available at: https://rebeccapartridge.com/projects/30-day-sky-studies-2017-2018/ (Accessed 4 November 2025).

Kandinsky, W. (1912) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Translated by M.T.H. Sadler. Project Gutenberg. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5321/pg5321-images.html (Accessed: 4 November 2025).

Freud, S. (1930) Civilization and Its Discontents. In Strachey, J. (ed. and trans.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XXI: The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works. London: Hogarth Press, p. 97.

Territories of Art Therapy (2013) Deleuze and Guattari – Routes. Available at: https://territoriesofarttherapy.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/routes/ (Accessed: 4 November 2025).

About the artist

Xijia Zhao is a China based painter, exploring tension between sweetness and decay, clarity and obscurity through her work. Xijia graduated from MA Fine Art: Painting at Camberwell in 2025.

Follow her work at @xijia_zhao