Chanel Cha’s body of work, the portraits as well as still-life and natural-themed paintings, are intentionally created to convey a feeling of delicacy and beauty by using careful composition, color, and light. These technical aspects of her painting are notable in their effectiveness, but only scratch the surface on how she creates artworks that can strike a chord in so many viewers. Cha says “I get inspiration for my paintings from childhood memories, a painful time in my life when I experienced loneliness and sought refuge in my imagination. My creative practice is a way to process those feelings in a sort of self-therapy. The honesty and truth behind my works allows me to engage with an audience on a deep level and to present my true self to the public. Although my inspiration comes from a dark place, the artistic process heals the trauma and there is hope and light in the final version of the image.”

The seeds of Dreaming were first planted during the Covid-19 pandemic when Cha spent a lot of time outdoors in nature. She says “Hearing the singing birds and seeing the spring sky and natural beauty of flowers and trees afforded me a brief escape from the chaotic feeling of a pandemic sweeping the world. This feeling brought me back to my childhood where I would escape to nature and daydream and feel a sense of hope, imagining playing with the singing birds as my friends.” In Dreaming we see a quasi-self portrait of the child-Chanel, playing with the birds in a beautiful and safe natural world.

However, Dreaming is not just a decorated reimagining of the past, but has a call to action from Cha ingrained within it. Chanel says “as an adult I have somewhat forgotten how to daydream, always being caught up with everyday life. Being out in nature and letting my mind wander in thought and dreams gave me a sense of hope for the world. I hope people take the opportunity to dream again like they did as a child.”

Three preparatory sketches for the composition of Dreaming

“I created a few thumbnail sketches to help to develop the composition into what it became. A young model, Anna, with whom I worked with before posed for hours in this process, while I sketched and painted.”

“The first step was to create an outline drawing. I did this by making a transfer drawing by drawing the portrait on tracing paper. Then I transferred the paper drawing onto the canvas/linen. The image above shows the drawing underneath a layer of light paint, called the under-painting, the first layer of paint used to stage the components of the artwork. I wanted to make sure all aspects of the painting (portrait, hands, dress, birds) were staged correctly. If there were aspects that needed changing, I could redraw and paint on top to correct it.”

“Comparing it with the first stage, you may notice that the dress is now a bit more flared out. In this photo the portrait, hands, and dress have three more layers of paint than in Stage #1, but I did not yet work on the details. I also noticed that I had made the face and features a bit too wide, so I had to make the face narrower. I still had not developed the background, I kept it as a thin washed out layer to get the overall feel and work it into the harmony of the entire painting.”

“I started to work on aspects of the foreground. You will see that I added the bird in her hands, a Lady Gouldian Finch, as well as Libretto Parrot tulips.

I chose the Libretto Parrot tulips and daffodils as the flowers to depict for a personal and intimate reason. When I was young I often felt alone especially in the cold winter months indoors. When I would see the daffodils appear in the many community gardens where I lived, a warm feeling would come over me as I knew spring was upon us, it gave me hope for new beginnings. Now, when I see spring flowers I still get that nostalgic feeling from my childhood, one that felt important to share in this artwork.”

“Although the composition depicts the outdoors, I primarily painted indoors. Therefore, I had to use a lot of my imagination, deduction and intuition to create a harmonious feeling of a young girl standing among flowers. I used natural light as well as 5600K light bulbs that mimic natural light to be able to work at different times in my studio.”

“It was very challenging to paint the tulips. Tulips will bloom and then change direction and form throughout the day, and they would never bloom the same one day to the next. I found myself constantly reworking the flowers as they would twist and change direction and shape with the ever changing movement of the sun. Paint, scrape off, paint, repeat!

I had a bouquet of tulips where I would have to choose one to paint that day and where to place it on the canvas. In the image above you can see the tulips to the right used for the painting.”

“At this stage I added the middle ground, daffodils, and the background sky and clouds. The bluish sky and clouds were inspired by my morning runs while looking towards the mountains in early spring.”

“As you can see I added more Lady Gouldian finches and added more detail. I wanted to bring out the ruffles in the dress and the tulip petals. I experimented with my palette to bring out more harmony between the colors. My previous paintings had much less detail, used larger brush strokes, with more dramatic dark and light values. My previous paintings used five values between black and white, whereas in Dreaming I used ten values. More values meant less drama, less of the coming out of the shadows, but in this painting I wanted a softer “fairytale” mood.”

“I decided to cut the top and slightly the edges. I wanted to bring the portrait more to the foreground and I wanted more emphasis on the figure.”

– Chanel Cha

When looking at the original sketches and work in progress images, we see Dreaming with an arched composition, but the final product was cropped to a straight edge. Another Painting by Cha, Purity, also depicts a girl surrounded by flowers, and has an arch in the final composition that is emphasized by its frame. Cha wanted to use arches because she felt that the arches matched the composition. “The arches give a softer loving feeling to the theme of youth and innocence. I almost felt the frame was like a mother’s arms embracing and protecting her child. I remember being so inspired by Madonna of the Chair by Raphael (1483–1520) at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Italy. I would deeply observe it every time I walked by. I guess the round frame in Raffaello’s masterpiece remained buried in the back of my mind.”

Cha says Dreaming was originally a piece meant to be more in tandem with Purity since the subjects and original compositions are so similar. However, the final decision to use a more traditional rectangular frame with Dreaming came when the piece was almost complete. Chanel explains: “I wanted to reduce the background space around the head area to bring the portrait closer for a more intimate feel.”

Painting for Chanel Cha is a form of self-expression. Through her art practice, she says she is able to “explore my deepest feelings and translate them into images that reach out to the viewer, creating an emotional connection.” She draws not only from her own past to create her artworks, but is greatly inspired by the works of others as well. “I adopt a very traditional style, inspired by the Italian masters of the Renaissance, which allows me to focus on the expressions of my subjects, using gentle brushstrokes and soft colors. My portraits are very expressive as I focus on capturing the essence of my subject whilst exploring a vast range of human emotions.”

Cha’s Dreaming although soft, sweet, and flowery in design, carries an innate balance. There is a dark inspiration of youthful isolation, an idea born in a global pandemic, and yet there is so much light in the final image. We are left with a girl not alone, but surrounded by singing friends, kept company by dreaming, ready for whatever is to come in the new spring.