Art is always for the viewers’ interpretation, but the artist can make their artwork mean the same thing but allow the viewer to input their own personal experience no matter what the artwork displays. Qing Han who was popularly known as Qinniart did this beautifully with each artwork that she produced.
Qing was diagnosed with Mitral Stenosis, that is where her mitral heart valve was too small and was not opening and closing properly, causing the blood in her left heart chamber to regurgitate back into my lungs because the opening was too small to let enough blood to flow to the next chamber. This caused her to have a tough time breathing when moving. She unfortunately passed away on February 8th, 2020.
In 2015 she had her first heart surgery, then had two more within the next two months. She described is as “after (the surgeries) I felt completely just numb. Though at this point, I was trying to come to terms with the fact that I have a ~20cm (about twice the length of the long edge of a credit card) long (9inches) scar on my chest. It was really quite… disheartening, to say the least, to have such a large and scary looking scar that looks so angry red and bumpy.”
This messed with Qing’s self-confidence and she could not quite figure out how to handle it. Until she turned to art. “I started drawing these girls with things coming out of a rip in their chest to kind of cope with it, really, but now I am starting to like this concept. I have seen people physically flinch or cringe a little when they see my scar, but I am dealing with it slowly.” She stated in an Instagram post. Here are a few of her artworks that she used to cope with.
Notice how she uses gold and bright to show her insides. I interpreted this as a hope. The women in these drawings may have a cut in their chest but they are not willing to make dampen them down. The way Qing uses watercolor helps her blend the colors together well to make dark vibrant and galaxy flow smoothly. She does not use hard lines when drawing the characters to show how they are both soft and beautiful yet fragile.
My favorite artwork from Qing is the art she makes when she is at her lowest. I adore how vulnerable and inspiring it is. I went through some of my toughest times with her art to help guide my emotions and make me feel less alone in the world. In the photos below you can see a young woman crying on the floor with a wave of darkness hovering over her. This shows how dark her mind is when going through treatments and surgeries with her heart, but you can also see gold tears of hope streaming down her face. No matter how hard it got she still had faith. In the second artwork we see a girl painting the sky from a white room. She is hooked up on an IV and seems to be in a hospital gown. Qing was at a stage of treatment where she was bed ridden and in a depressive state. She tried to capture that feeling in this painting and I believe she did it so well. Being bedridden, all she could do was dream and draw. The woman in the artwork does not look completely broken by her situation, she is making art and something beautiful out of it. She is creating more color and hope into her life than the plain white room she may be trapped in for the moment being.
Qing truly had a talent for creating moving artwork whether it be through hope by using soft lines, bright colors, and the blending of watercolor. Or by creating desperate art by using darks with bright gold to contrast the painting and using emotionally vulnerable poses. Qing Han is and will be dearly missed for more than a lifetime. Rest in peace, Qing.
