Daily Inspiration: Meet Via Li

Today we’d like to introduce you to Via Li.

Hi Via, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My path to painting developed while I was studying illustration at SCAD, where I earned my MFA in 2022. I had planned to continue as a freelance illustrator, but working directly with paint, charcoal, and canvas became increasingly important to me.

After balancing illustration, teaching, and my studio practice, I shifted my focus to painting full time this year. My work has evolved from exploring women’s emotional experiences to investigating emotion as a force that acts on the body, space, and atmosphere.

I work with charcoal, acrylic washes, and dry pigment on unprimed canvas. Fragmented figures emerge within fields of color, where the body and its surroundings seem to affect one another. At the core of my practice is the tension between immersion and observation—experiencing emotion while also witnessing how it unfolds. I’m interested in how these states coexist, both while making a painting and while viewing it.

I’m currently participating in the SCAD Alumni Atelier residency in Lacoste, France. Here, I’m developing larger paintings and exploring how scale, gesture, and materials give these emotional forces a physical presence.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been a straight path. One of the biggest challenges has been balancing the need to earn a living with the time and energy painting requires. Working in illustration and teaching supported me, but finding sustained time for my own practice was difficult.

Moving from illustration toward painting also meant learning to work without knowing the outcome. I had to become more comfortable with uncertainty and allow the materials to change the direction of a piece.

That uncertainty is still part of building a career as an artist. I’m learning how to create enough stability to keep working while giving the paintings room to develop at their own pace.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a contemporary painter exploring emotion as a force that shapes the body, space, and atmosphere. I work mainly with charcoal, acrylic washes, and dry pigment on unprimed canvas, bringing fragmented figures into tension with fields of color.

Charcoal lines suggest bodies that are shifting or coming apart, while color surrounds, presses against, or moves through them. I let staining, erasure, and layering remain visible so viewers can sense how the painting developed.

What feels most specific to my practice is the relationship between immersion and observation. I’m interested in how we can be inside an emotional experience while also witnessing it. That tension guides how I paint and what I hope viewers experience.

I’m most proud of developing a visual language that feels increasingly my own. My current SCAD Alumni Atelier residency in Lacoste, France, has given me the space to deepen that language through larger paintings and material experiments.

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I would say the willingness to pay close attention, even when something feels uncertain or unresolved. In the studio, that means noticing what a line, a stain, or an unexpected shift in color is doing before deciding what comes next.

That same quality helps me keep developing as an artist. I try to stay open to feedback, question my habits, and follow ideas that may take time to understand. It allows my work to grow beyond what I already know how to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.vialiart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/viali_art/?hl=zh-cn

Image Credits
Via Li