Leyi (Ruby) Yang Shares 5 Pro-tips to Help Aspiring Artists Build Stellar Careers

An aspiring artist with dreams in her eyes, Leyi (Ruby) Yang loves to study the emptiness, the meaningless and likes to deconstruct and recreate forms and meanings through her art. Ruby seeks to go further down the path to unravel the mysteries of unspoken feelings and expressions in humans.

Art and literature have undoubtedly played a significant role in shaping human history and culture. What makes art and its creators so unique is the subjectivity that art provides. It has a new meaning to every onlooker and can invoke new associations when perceived from a new angle. Such is the beauty of art and its power to hold infinite possibilities of interpretation. One of the most promising Bay Area based new-age artists is Leyi (Ruby) Yang. Her paintings are generally composed upon large-scaled canvases, covered with layers of paints, using extremely vibrant colours, and adds a touch of untamed drawing of words. She creates a space where words take on new meaning and colours whisper into your senses to make you a year to go beyond where the gaze ends. Ruby is an innovative mind who believes in thinking differently. She suggests some of the integral factors that budding artists can incorporate to build sky-high artistic careers.

Knowing self to find expression in art

For Ruby, understanding one’s personality and analyzing self is key to showing expression in art. It is one’s value system and a deep sense of mindfulness that goes into making great art and artists. ” I shifted between different departments such as art and technology, painting, printmaking, etc. I experienced as many angles as I could to figure out what interested me. It is becoming clear now that I am interested in language, fragmented words, colours that don’t have to have any meanings,” states Ruby and emphasizes as the numero uno step in becoming an artist of repute.

Staying true opens doors for an artist

For Ruby, being honest plays a crucial role in creating a genuine piece of art. She tries to address issues that are mostly left unspoken by commoners. Her predominant motif in her artworks expresses the sense of emptiness and vacuum that most people hide deep inside their hearts and feel challenged to address. Ruby’s arts are addressed to give expression to such feelings of emptiness and loneliness.

Creating art from the seemingly nondescript items

For Ruby, keeping herself busy and creating art from scrap plays a very important role in overcoming constraints in life. Since the pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges in artists’ lives, Ruby advises all to keep moving and creating pieces irrespective of the right resources or environment. “I lost my studio due to the pandemic. Everything is closed and I don’t have space to work. I thought about this a lot. I used food to make drawings; then I went out to places and made ephemeral drawings. It was very inspiring and I got ideas on performances and installations. In my recent work, I use pebble stones as my material,” mentions Ruby on her survival spirit.

Keeping the wheels moving to overcome obstructions

The road to artistry is often a lonely one. It leads to disillusionment and frustration. Ruby advises potential artists to keep ones’ hopes high and be consistent with work. Incase of artist block moments, one can take up a hobby to practice and be relevant. It is essential to keep up the spirits to overcome such lows in life. ” The way I dealt with it is just to accept it and keep making something. It could be writing a studio note, random drawings, going to places, trash talk with friends. Anything. I just need to start living to figure things out. I cannot exist without living. And being alive does not mean that I am living,” mentions Ruby.

Testing determination is key to earning trust

As a struggling artist, there might be initial roadblocks when it comes to finding institutions or galleries that would like to showcase the arts. There might be several rejections before one gets an affirmative. Ruby testifies to have gone through the same and suggests that for every artist, such a time is like a test of one’s perseverance and to remain in the show is most important to earn a name and reputation in the world.

Way ahead

Though a very introverted person, Ruby has big dreams. She envisions to show her art to the world and get a ticket to the biggest art galleries that holds much promise and fame to add to an artist’s curriculum vitae.