vanessa ly

The majority of my work is black and white. For me, there is a sense of simplicity and sharpness in working with ink that allows me to give the content clarity; I love details, and I really do enjoy spending unimaginable hours drawing every hatch line.

There is no such thing as perfection, and never do I imagine attempting to perfect any piece of art; more so, it is the feeling of accomplishment in finishing a piece and the satisfaction it brings when a drawing opens the door for interpretation. Some say many of my pieces are slightly feminist, political, or something that resembles an era; normally, when a drawing is completed, a series follow.

I often time get stuck in a time frame ... one can say that my art work can be broken down with a time line

The mind is simply filled with randomness. When an inspiration comes, whether from watching television or going to a concert, research begins. You can never force an idea to surface; the more you think, the more difficult it becomes to create anything worthwhile.

The majority of time when asked to do projects for friends or events, a theme is usually given. From there, I work around a concept that envelops the theme in terms of what feelings conjure up to express the depth and meaning of the given project; I guess I could say that my art is developed as a response to a statement.

When an idea is formed, there are sometimes days of research done and series of sketches in the working process to finite the concept. Once determined, I normally just take a marker and a piece of paper and start drawing until what is needed to be said is on the given surface. Vanessa Ly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in architecture, a discipline that instills in her mostly black-and-white drawings sharpness, clarity and an optimistic sense of space that celebrates human diversity with imagination.

Vanessa Ly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in architecture. She currently lives in Malden, Massachusetts.