Recently graduating from Slade School of Fine Art, 23-year old Faye Wei Wei is apart of a new wave of passionate young artists giving new life and energy to painting. Working from her home studio in South London, Faye’s large-scale dreamy figurative artworks are impressive in size, affection and prowess. With canvases almost the height of the room and a floor piled with drawings, the only way to describe the experience of encountering Faye’s work is to liken it to a reverie. Gorgeous and compelling in equal parts, it’s hard not to gush while getting lost in the romance of the pastel tones and buoyant mark making. Influenced by illuminated manuscripts, Fra Angelico and the symbolism of sea, the London born painter’s emotionally-charged and aesthetically-decorative work explores love, masculine tropes and the performance of gender. With her first ever solo show at Cob Gallery soon approaching, we spent the afternoon with Faye to discuss her time at art school, wanting to be more than a token Asian artist and whether or not it’s possible to have a crush on a painting.

Do you remember the first person to encourage you to make art?

I had really great teachers in high school and a really amazing art department. I always knew that I wanted to do it but I was really lucky to have people who encouraged me to do it too. I went to a school that was pretty much all boys and I felt really competitive. I wanted to be just as good as the boys or even better. So I’d always be quite obnoxious in class and make really big drawings and occupy a lot of space.

I imagine it takes a lot of confidence to make a large-scale work…

I usually paint on canvases that are 72×54 inches. It’s exactly the right weight and size in proportion to my own body. When I’m working on this size, I can make exactly the right gestures. When you’re mark making, you’re kind of dancing with the painting. You’re performing in a way. It seems like exactly the right size for me. I can move them around and they’re not too hard to stretch. I find it really difficult to do small paintings. The scale is really challenging. Because my work is figurative, I really want to feel the human scale. You’re making something come alive that looks like a human. It’s a really intimate thing. You’re totally alone and lost with this person that you’re forming out of nothing.

Do you feel like painting big means you’re less conscious of every mark you make?

I really try to make every mark mean it. Even if it’s big, I think every element is so important to how it looks in the end. I feel like when I’m there in front of a canvas, I have to be really genuine, otherwise, the marks look sloppy and it doesn’t hold the love and emotion and the magic that I want it to.

Is intimacy important to your practice?

Yes. I’m totally infatuated with painting. I was reading this interview between Jutta Koether and Mike Kelley and they were taking about the difference between painting and music. They were saying that you can’t have a crush on a painting like you can with a band and I liked that idea. Music can be so overwhelmingly romantic. I think a lot of artists sometimes just wish they made music. There’s something about music that totally envelops your entire body. Whereas with painting, unless you’re making it, you’re not having that type of experience with it.

I think it’s possible to have a crush on a good painting…

I hope so. I just love that everyone still really loves art. I think there is something about art that is so magical. I went to the abstract expressionist show at the Royal Academy. It was amazing to see people responding to painting in that way still. People were looking at a de Kooning and you could feel them getting lost in the energy and the expression. I guess in a way it’s similar to music.

Do you feel like painting’s power is in it’s ability to instantly connect with regular people?

Yes. I feel like with painting, you look at it and it either draws you in or it doesn’t. It’s so immediate. I think you can look at a painting without having any knowledge of the context. You don’t have to over intellectualise it because if a painting is good, whatever it’s about, you get this gut reaction like ‘Wow, someone really cared and there’s so much love in this’.