Today we’d like to introduce you to Xue DiMaggio.
Hi Xue, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve been living in LA for over a year now. It’s been a delicious ebb and flow of life and learning, discovery, and growth. I’ve always been a crafty, creative human and being back in LA has been a warm embrace of creativity, exploration, and pure, unadulterated expression. Painting and the yummy textures paint provides is my first home but I am always expanding into different forms of creation such as digital art (thanks Procreate), aquascaping, knitting and baking! Currently, I am working on a mental health project that aims to reframe our relationship(s) to the ‘monsters in our minds’.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The question “has it been a smooth road?” makes me think about how we conceptualize time, ‘progress’, and movement. I’ve always had difficulty with gauging time (aka time blindness). This difference in how I perceive has led me to examine the way we line up our lives in a linear way, despite the circularity of all the processes around us. Adherence to linearity is pretty central in western culture but with my background and interest in ethnobotany and indigenous knowledge systems, I’ve begun to re-investigate the frameworks we operate and think through.
I love finding connections because I feel that everything IS connected. But I feel that we as a society have also become more compartmentalized, rigid, individualistic, and separate from the whole. So in a roundabout way, I guess what I’ve struggled with is this societal expectation of productivity, capital, and unwavering progress toward an end goal, while not actually resonating with (or even examining) what this end goal is supposed to be. All of this is to say I am deeply invested in sustainability, personally, socially, environmentally, etc. Though sustainability isn’t exactly at the center of all our life decisions (though I hope it eventually will be…) I’m making the effort to make it just that. This also feeds into my personal experience and journey with understanding my brain. I would often just keep pushing and pushing until I couldn’t anymore, and then I would crash hard. I would reach these burnout periods where I literally could not function. And now, I’ve gotten to the point of reaching for the question “but why?”.
And the answer is simply that I did not (and still don’t!) understand how to healthily balance and sustain the various pushes and pulls of life. I wanted to do it all, do ALL the things, regardless of what my mind and body were telling me. And this feeling of needing to be more, to do more, to become more, can be exhausting. But I’ve realized that through this achievement obsession, I had been focusing on outward validation to fill an insecure void, to make sure that I matter. But the truth is building self-worth and confidence is an internal journey. Through this work and reflection, I’ve found how important it is to speak to yourself with the same kindness you share with others. And to give yourself the messages that you’ve so clearly sought out in others. So here’s a message for you, kind reader, you are a wonderful human doing your best. And for whatever it’s worth, I believe you, and I believe IN you.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Color is the seasoning of life and it pulls me into every corner of creation. Similar to how I view and listen to my plants and what their leaves are telling me, color gives me endless information and inspiration. My personal process involves me listening to what the colors want – which, I know, sounds kind of kooky. I generally don’t have a final destination in mind for a piece and rather start building off of the colors I use and the shapes I can find in them. I like to feel for the movement and flow of a piece and from that, I can “see” what the piece should become. But similar to life, this idea of what a thing should become can be limiting as it closes your mind off to other possibilities. That’s why I’ve come to approach my work with the compassion that I give my mind, giving each piece the patience and space to evolve and come to its own conclusions. This being said, I am most proud of the way I listen to my creative intuition. Being patient and understanding with her has helped me heal in a lot of ways because just like humans, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And you can choose, every day, to hold yourself and your work in the same beautiful glow that your loved ones hold you.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Curiosity. As a lifelong learner (instilled by my parents, both former educators) I am always looking to add more to the landscape in my mind. I truly believe that education and seeking out your own answers (and the critical thinking, questioning that goes with it) is essential to evolution and growth, personally and societally. My most asked question is “Why?”.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.xuedimaggioart.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xuedimaggioart/?hl=en
Image Credits
All photos were taken by me, Xue.
