Meet Wenjia Wang | Artist& illustrator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Wenjia Wang and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Wenjia, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Being a freelance illustrator has been my dream since I was still an undergraduate student at the School of Visual Arts. I had inspiring teachers while at school they shared a lot of experiences with us as full-time illustrators. I saw they had published amazing works on all kinds of platforms, which I really looked up to. Back then, I had this fantasy idea about being a freelance creator, which means I can be my own boss, I don’t need to go to work every day, I can manage my own working time and take a vacation anytime I want to. But the reality isn’t what I thought it was gonna be. Although I had heard from so many illustrators who had been in the industry for a while, either well-established or still figuring things out, It is not an easy route. So I had the mind that it was not gonna be easy as a starter, I knew, maybe the first few months, I wouldn’t get any job, and maybe even the first few years would be full of struggles. I thought I had enough mental preparation.-No matter what, I would try my best to market myself, sending promotional emails to art directors, and attending art events, through myself into the illustration industry. But when I graduated with an MFA degree in my hand and sent endless promotional emails to art directors and never heard back from them. It was pretty disappointing. Although I know it is part of progress, it takes time. As a freelance creator, I have to manage pressure from different roles I play, my own financial consultant, supervisor, marketing manager, product manager, and even legal consultant. Besides all the struggles of being a freelance art creator, the idea of your creation would be seen and maybe influence your audience in some way, maybe just give them a good mood, or make a kid interested in illustration a little bit more would be my way of changing the world and make me feel that I had been existing in this information explosion era.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My journey of getting into the art field wasn’t smooth at first. When I was a kid, my parents sent me to different kinds of extracurricular hobby classes. At first, I asked to sign up for several classes like dancing and piano classes but I didn’t enjoy it at all and ended up giving it up. My parents were a little bit disappointed that I only had a passion for something for a very limited time. But this time I developed a strong interest in art, specifically in painting and drawing. I asked my mom to sign me up for a traditional Chinese ink drawing class, but she refused me at first. “You are doing this again! Trying something new and losing interest in just a second.” I remember I did a lot of begging and promises to my mom to convince her to send me to a weekend drawing class. Since then, starting in elementary school, every weekend has become my favorite. I learned lots of basic skills with different mediums, which include traditional Chinese ink calligraphy, traditional Chinese ink brush painting, pencil sketching, gouache, etc. Drawing and painting have become my hobby, but I never thought I would go to college to start art. Until I moved to the U.S. when I was 17th. Alone study abroad, away from families, with broken English. It was tough. Art was my utopia at the moment, I was drawing and painting after school. I remembered that my high school art teacher Mrs. Rideout encouraged me a lot when I was hesitant about whether I should apply to art college. Well, here I ended up as a professional freelance illustrator now. Since I had practiced traditional Chinese calligraphy when I was very young, which is considered fundamental for traditional Chinese ink brush painting, later it developed a distinct quality of my work which involves ink drawing lines. Sometimes I do my line work in ink, but I always color my work digitally. Because it is easy to make changes and do some color experiments if the work is done digitally. When coloring my work, I always wanted to have a bright, refreshing, tender color palette, but if the audience took another look into my image, they would find that my work isn’t just a frivolous colorful image but trying to deliver messages that can make people think or relate to. I think it is fun to attract the audience’s attention with a playful color palette and then shock them with the message that is delivered through storytelling.
The subject of my illustration always reflects my focus of attention through that specific time period. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, because of the lockdown and the fear of catching the virus, I isolated myself and became almost myopically focused on myself, and how my body feels. Because of the mental tension, I started to realize that the mind can influence how the body feels. The physical experience activates the psychological feelings, and vice versa. This is called Embodied cognition, which is the relationship between physical experience and psychological states. I did a series of illustrations that focus on showing the human body’s reaction under the influence of the physical environment and subjective consciousness. The physical experience activates the psychological feelings, and vice versa. Each drawing presents one specific body part and its reaction under a specific environment.
As an art creator, sometimes self-doubt would drown me like a gigantic wave from nowhere, which is a big struggle for me. One of my mentors, Heysu, who is an incredibly talented and successful illustrator, suggested that entering competitions would help me gain confidence. So I entered different competitions and won several national competitions, like American illustrator, 3X3 magazine, Graphics, and MoCCA. And my suggestion to beat self-doubt is to stay close to the illustrator community because being an illustrator sometimes can be very isolated, when you are on this path alone, the self-doubt can drown you. Communicating with your fellow illustrator is a crucial thing to beat the self-doubts and learn from each other, make friends in this illustrating journey!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Museums are one of the reasons that make New York the center of the Art world. MoMA, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum… the list can go on and on. Among all the different museums, the Metropolitan Museum is my favorite! And it is a must-go place in New York City. It is located on the eastern edge of Central Park. I never get tired of going there. Every time you go there, you will always find something new. The Met is the largest art museum in the Americas. It contains over two million works in its permanent collection, divided among 17 curatorial departments. So the Metropolitan museum to me, who is the artistic creator, is like a nutrition box. You can see all the great works of art done by humans from different cultures and different time periods. It inspires me and makes me want to create. And you can go to Central Park, where you can enjoy the beauty of nature in the middle of the “concrete jungle”. Music concerts in the summertime. Ice Skating during the winter, rowing a boat and enjoying the beautiful sunset while the wild water birds swim around the boat, It can’t be more beautiful! Food! Food! Food! You can find all kinds of food on earth in New York City! New York is definitely heaven for foodies. As a foodie myself I would love to recommend the Chongqing Lao Zao, which is a super popular and authentic Chinese Hot Pot. Warning, the wait time during their busy hour can be up to 3 hours and it is in Flushing, which takes some travel if you live in Manhattan. But trust me, the traffic and the waiting time are worth it. As soon as you step inside the restaurant, you would notice the uniqueness of Chinese architecture and decoration. Go and experience it if you like spicy food!
And if you happen to be a fan of performance art. I highly! highly recommend Sleep No More. It is an immersive theater experience, in which the audience walks at their own pace through a variety of theatrically designed rooms and environmental theater. The audience can follow the character’s steps and see the story from that specific character’s personal view, which makes the show can be seen multiple times with completely different experiences. The show really evokes the audience’s sensation with different theatrics, which involves strobe lights, lasers, fog, haze, and even full nudity. And forget to mention, all the audience are required to wear a mask to cover their whole face and that mask makes you a character in the story- the “ghost” who witnesses all the drama.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Firstly I want to thank my parents who don’t understand the illustration industry at all and are confused why their daughter is not finding a full-time job but in the end always supported me anyway. And I really appreciate my FIT families. I’m so grateful that I had such supporting classmates and mentors. Before starting my MFA at FIT. I was a little bit afraid of starting a painting or drawing. I was so concerned that I wouldn’t portray my idea in the best way of drawing it. I became a little hesitant in terms of creation. But I met so many supportive and truly kind mentors like Lauren Berke, John Jay, Hyesu Lee, Martha Rich, and Brendan Leach really helped me to pick up my confidence in creating new illustration works. And Dennis Dittrich and Anelle Miller who were my thesis mentors, they really helped me refine my thesis ideas and put my thesis project together. Without their support and great advice on improving my illustration skills, I’m sure I would end up in a miserable place.

Website: https://www.wenjia-wang.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wenjiaart/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wenjia-wang-211926139/

Twitter: @wenjiawang10