Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Niu
Caroline, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I had two dream jobs at age 14: becoming a punk band singer or drawing funny comics. It didn’t take long to discover I had no talent for music—it was the only class I almost failed—so I embarked on the second dream.
I guess my starting point for making art is embarrassingly simple: it’s the subtle smile that appears on people’s faces when they look at my work. The ones you just can’t refrain from when you’ve discovered a message, a secret, a lie—or when you see your cat’s grumpy face. Growing up I was an incredibly shy child—so shy that my kindergarten teachers thought I had autism and seriously suggested my parents send me to special schools. Discovering that I could make people smile and talk to me like old friends, just through my drawings, felt like a miracle.
Making art has always felt miraculous: giving form to those ghostly, ineffable feelings and dream-world visions that hover just beyond our grasp. It’s why I fell in love with animation. It could be a vessel for either a carefully woven fantasy story, or just the meandering thoughts and internal dialogues that emerge during a lonely evening walk. It has the remarkable gift of preserving life’s most fragile moments—those whispered feelings and passing thoughts—and carrying them to another heart, still warm with life.
I started making animations in high school, and finished two in two years. One was about falling into a book page, another about a mythical creature called Yoyo and it became an extinct species—just imagine an octopus without legs, or maybe just a sausage with eyes. My first 3-minute animation took me 4 months to complete. Now, as I’m about to graduate from college and become a lot more experienced, my animations have only grown shorter in length but take longer to make. I draw machines with weird mechanics that make them feel organic rather than mechanical; I create transformations, morphing a cat into a cavity, a fog into a frog; I also paint, hiding my animations, my secrets, and my eyes within the layers. I guess I make art because I like playing hide and seek.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to be accepted into wonderful institutions and explore my interests in environments that are supportive, yet competitive. Becoming an animator was simply no one’s dream job at places like Columbia University. For a long time, I struggled to find where I belonged, feeling my dreams and everything I loved were somehow out of sync, childish, or escapist.
Also just small moments of doubt—when animations I’d spent weeks creating were overlooked by algorithms and barely reached a hundred views, or during those quiet nights in my studio, staring at paintings that refused to progress.
What really helped was finding community, and realizing that no matter how niche your interests are, there are always others who share your exact passions. Getting accepted into the prestigious Yale Norfolk summer program was a turning point. For the first time, I found myself in a professional, immersive environment with other talented young artists. During that intensive six-week program, I began to develop my own artistic language and finally found a sense of belonging.
Being naturally pessimistic (maybe that’s why I’m drawn to making funny comics), I have a complicated relationship with success—good fortune makes me anxious about future disappointments. To me, art-making has always been about problem-solving, finding that thrilling moment when you’re about to “save” something seemingly hopeless and make it “work,” even if it takes hours, weeks, or years.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a freelance animator, illustrator, and painter, my work lives in the spaces between different media and the collected moments of everyday life. I’m drawn to those small, often overlooked details—a centuries-old cavity at the Met, the lingering dog hair on an unworn coat, or the way your face distorts in the reflection of a glass bottle. These fragments become the building blocks of my art, arranged like panels in a comic book or a cabinet of curiosities.
I’m particularly drawn to creating unexpected, playful transformations and finding something special in ordinary places. Poetry isn’t quite the right word—we tend to use it to over-generalize too many important, subtle things. That’s where my work comes in, capturing those specific, delicate moments that words often fail to describe. What truly drives my practice is its ability to create tiny bridges between people—those small mutual grounds where viewers, perhaps weary from growing estrangement, can find pieces of their own experiences reflected back at them.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
The ability to amuse myself and find joy in the smallest things. To make people I care about smile.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carolineniuart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolineniuart/
- Other: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/user/profile/62806e1a00000000210277da
