Our home is our haven, it’s the place where we rest, where we can truly be ourselves and we don’t have to perform for others. It’s this sense of belonging and warmth that comes through in the domestic paintings of artist and illustrator Naiting Huang.
Whether it be the newspaper that we haven’t finished reading or the flowers in a vase of water that have now started to bloom, every item in our home is charged with memories. It also provides some insight into how we live and it’s why so many people are keen to see someone else’s home as it’s an extension of its inhabitant’s personality, and we all feel like we understand a person better once we’ve seen where and how they live and how they choose to decorate their home. Taiwanese artist Naiting Huang captures snippets of her everyday life and invites us into this private space, so that we can become spectators to her daily routines but also get that sense of content domesticity that Naiting gets from her own living space.
By electing to paint close cropped compositions it ensures we see glimpses of her home so we can focus on individual slices of her life. The choice of warm colours ensures that the sense of warmth she feels in our own life is conveyed to us as the viewer.
She’s an artist that’s shown in London, Taipei and Athens, and just as we ourselves may travel around the world, it’s always our homes that call us back as the place where we feel most comfortable – a sense of place that is still evolving for Naiting as she spends more time in the UK.
This sense of changing identity aligns with the fact she lives in London, one of the world’s great cultural melting pots that’s filled with people of different backgrounds. We all want to know how other people live, how they think, their values and what matters most to them and there’s no better place to find that than in someone’s home. It’s what makes us all unique and intriguing to others.
This broader cultural trend is reflected in today’s contemporary art scene where many of today’s leading artists are conveying their own sense of identity and what this means in a wider social context through their work – whether this be about gender, race, heritage, the cultures we’ve all been raised and how other cultures have influenced us. We get a sense of this from Naiting’s work and as her practice develops I would be interested to see more of herself filter into her paintings so that the works remain relatable but the subject matter becomes more personal to Naiting and reflective of her life as it evolves.
Art offers us a portal into the artist’s life, it’s putting their life on show and making themselves vulnerable for us all to examine – it’s what can make art so powerful and it’s what Naiting Huang does through her work.
When Naiting is painting, she thinks about it sitting or hanging quietly in a home or space. She hopes that her painting can give the audience a moment of tranquillity and reflection, a gentle ode to everyday life. Her paintings allow us to feel the sense of belonging that resonates throughout her art. As we look into her intimate scenes, we see the details of everyday life – the half-read newspaper, the blooming flowers, the shopping bag. These ordinary details provide us with the means to connect with her journey through life. Naiting’s work encourages viewers to appreciate the beauty in the ordinary and contemplate our own relationship with home, identity, and belonging.
Like with our own homes, Naiting’s will evolve over time, and so will her art to reflect these changes. What won’t change is the openness of her art, which will continue to offer a doorway into her life and home.
You can find out more about Naiting Huang through her website and her Instagram.
All photos copyright and courtesy Naiting Huang. First image: Naiting at her studio in London. Second image: Weekend Mornings, Acrylic on canvas, 40x50cm, 2023. Third image: “Grocery”, “Breakfast time” Paintings Exhibited at Candid Arts Gallery, London, 2024.
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Art Critic for both FAD and Londonist. See as many exhibitions as possible and write reviews, opinion pieces and a weekly top 5 for FAD.
