Finding My Visual Language, Part 2: When My Art Began Speaking Back

At the end of Part 1, I mentioned that it took a hot shower for me to finally understand what I had been creating.

It was May 2024, during a trip to Fukuoka for an exhibition. I had recently attended a Business Storytelling course at SMU, which helped me clarify my artistic WHY. While thinking about my diptych Weaving Thoughts into Reality, something suddenly clicked.

“Oh! So THAT’S what I’ve been doing!”

Apparently, hot showers are where important artistic discoveries happen 😂

With Weaving Thoughts into Reality at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, where a hot shower later helped me realise that I had been creating visual mantras for myself.

I realised that I had been creating visual mantras for myself. During difficult moments, images of my completed artworks would sometimes surface in my mind, bringing me back to the words connected to them. Weaving Thoughts into Reality reminded me, “I am kind to myself.” (which has seen evolved into "I create my destiny.") Emotional Landscape carried the mantra, “I embrace all of me.”

On 29 May 2024, I reintroduced myself as an artist:

Hi, I’m Caihui and I paint colourful mantras to cultivate self-acceptance, self-love and self-compassion.

It was a genuine light-bulb moment, although “visual mantras” still felt rather abstract to me. My paintings had their own titles, while the accompanying mantras lived separately in their descriptions. I understood how the completed images could become reminders, especially because I am a visual learner.

What I had not fully recognised yet was what could happen while I was creating them.

Nothing Needs Fixing

In July 2025, I participated in a Japanese speech contest and came in third.

I came in third and felt proud, grateful and sorely disappointed. Those conflicting emotions later found their way into Nothing Needs Fixing.

I was sorely disappointed. I had genuinely wanted first place.

But disappointment was not the only emotion I felt. I was also grateful that I had 3rd place, and then guilty and ashamed that disappointment was in the mix. Why could I not simply be contented with 3rd place? Why was I being so ungrateful?

Around that time, I needed to create a new artwork for an exhibition in September. I did not begin painting with the intention of processing those emotions. I simply began while carrying all of them with me.

As the colourful waves emerged, I noticed how some of the colours seemed to clash. They did not match neatly, yet they could still exist together within the same artwork. Neither colour had to disappear for the painting to feel whole.

The original Nothing Needs Fixing now hangs in a life transformation coach’s studio, where it continues to hold its message for others.

And suddenly, the artwork became a mirror.

I could be disappointed and grateful. One feeling did not invalidate the other, and neither made me a bad person.

Both were valid. Nothing needs fixing.

The words arrived while I was painting. They became the title of the artwork and a way of understanding what I was experiencing.

Nothing Needs Fixing was not telling me to stay exactly as I was, ignore what hurt or pretend that growth was unnecessary. It was an invitation to stop beginning from the assumption that something within me was wrong.

I wrote more about the emotions behind the artwork in Don’t Tell Me What to Feel. At the time, I did not know that the work would later resonate with others, find a collector and lead to a larger commission. That was meaningful, but the deeper shift had already happened while I was painting. The artwork had helped me recognise, honour and resolve my own experience.

With the larger commissioned version of Nothing Needs Fixing in its collector’s home. What began as a personal realisation went on to resonate beyond me.

When trying to fix it makes things worse

Sometimes, when I dislike part of a painting, I keep working on it because I am determined to make it look a particular way. I add more pastel, push harder and interfere with the paper until it becomes overworked.

The irony is that my attempt to “fix” it can cause more damage.

At some point, I have to recognise that I am forcing the outcome and stop. It does not guarantee that the section will magically become beautiful. Sometimes an awkward patch is simply an awkward patch. But if I pause before immediately reacting to my judgement, I may eventually discover that the colour or mark belongs within the larger artwork after all.

This is one way my art speaks back to me. Not by literally giving me answers, but by showing me how I respond when something does not look the way I expected. Perfectionism, impatience, self-criticism and imposter syndrome can all appear while I paint. So can joy, playfulness and satisfaction.

I do not have to insist that painting must always make me feel peaceful or positive. I can allow the experience to be what it is without immediately making myself, or the artwork, wrong.

Nothing needs fixing does not mean nothing can change. It means change does not have to come from a space of something being "wrong".

It is not a formula

Not every artwork follows the same path.

My chakra-inspired Ashes to Light collection developed over approximately two years (just completed the final 8th piece last month!). For those 8 works, I researched the meanings and elements of the chakras, reflected on what I wanted each piece to convey and refined the accompanying affirmations over time. The artwork titles and mantras remained separate.

Seven of the eight works from my Ashes to Light collection, developed over two years through research, reflection and creative exploration.

With Nothing Needs Fixing, the words arrived through painting. The same happened with Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. By then, the affirmation itself had become the title, and the entire artwork became its visual expression.

With Feel the Fear & Do It Anyway, where the affirmation that emerged while creating became the title of the artwork itself.

While creating that piece, I kept returning to the reminder: I own the process. I don’t own the outcome. I shared the fuller story in Feeling the Fear and Doing It Anyway.

Sometimes an affirmation emerges intuitively. Sometimes it develops through research, conversations and reflection.

Still becoming

I am currently creating the first of two artworks for an exhibition in January 2027. Interestingly, I'm starting this creative process carrying big and heavy emotions from a very recent experience.

I am curious how these emotions will be alchemised in the creative process by simply allowing them to be included. I now work in short morning sessions, often for less than an hour.

Because I was also processing my emotions in daily life, something interesting happened between painting sessions. By the 3rd day, the heaviness had shifted towards something lighter. Even my anchor playlist began changing. The music became more playful, and because I have been feeling a strong desire to move my body lately, I started dancing while I painted.

The artwork did not have to remain in the emotional place where it began.

The heaviness was real. The lightness was real too. Both could belong to the same creative journey.

Of course, there is still an exhibition deadline, upcoming travel and the occasional fear that I will ruin everything. I set the intention of surrendering to the process - but that does not mean sitting back and hoping a completed painting appears on its own. I am still making choices, experimenting and guiding the work.

Pastel-stained fingers and an artwork still becoming. I do not yet know where it will lead or what affirmation may emerge.

Creating an artwork sometimes feels a little like giving birth. Perhaps this is the artist in me being dramatic, but I nurture something without knowing exactly what it will eventually look like. There is excitement and anticipation, as well as uncertainty. I can guide the process, but I cannot completely control what emerges.

These two works are still unfinished. I do not know what their final forms will be or whether affirmations will emerge from them. Heck, I don't even know if I will have time to create two works in this timeframe - maybe it will only be one. And that's okay.

Part 1 of my blog was about learning to let other people see my art. Perhaps Part 2 is about discovering how my art helps me see myself.

Not every painting reveals something. Not every difficult emotion needs to become an artwork. But creating has become a space where I can encounter what is present, listen to myself and sometimes discover a different way of relating to what I feel.

And when I find myself judging, forcing or trying too hard to make the experience become something else, I can return to the reminder that began within those colourful, clashing waves:

Nothing needs fixing. And if you've read to the end - send an emoji 💜in the comment! You deserve a medal for reading such a long blog in a whole of fast information!