About Artist -- Alicia Zhao
Age: 12
Alicia Zhao first started oil painting at the age of 10, after a few years of sketching and watercolors. She first began by painting still life and solid objects, but then later found that her interests lied in painting strange, abstract scenes, objects, and different types of animals. Out of the many animals she paints, she favors birds in particular, concentrating on many species of uncommon birds and placing them in distant, out-of-the-ordinary backgrounds. Her paintings are not regular objects; rather, she focuses on turning them into something one wouldn’t find ordinarily in everyday life.
She enjoys painting birds because she is captured by the complexity and detailed texture of bird feathers, and concentrates on replicating that unique texture with oil paints. She enjoys painting things that fly, because she is able to draw the unique structure of wings that enable flight.
Her landscape paintings vary from place from place, some at night, others showing day time. She prefers painting more abstract, open landscapes, such as mountain ranges or oceans, as compared to crowded, detailed scenes, such as cities or dense forests.
Her color schemes also vary from painting to painting, depending on the mood she felt like portraying, or the color of the object. Sometimes she will color the background to contrast the object and make the object stand out more, while other times, she will paint the background a less contrasting color, to help the objects blend. Her cooler, darker colored paintings might depict a sense of cool, or calm, while her brighter colored paintings may depict eagerness, or emotion. Her “pastel” colors may even suggest peace, or relaxation. But in general, she tends to use brighter colors that stand out (as opposed to duller colors, such as grey or brown), and she often will distort the reality of an animal, simply by changing the color of it to something unnatural (such as painting a tiger emerald green, something she had been planning to do earlier).
Her other hobbies include reading fantasy, fiction, and science fiction books, where she may draw some of her more fictional inspirations from, such as phoenix birds or dragons. She also plays the piano, as well as several other musical instruments.
