Not everything needs to make sense before it exists.
Joanne Parker/ Xiaohan Liu
I am an artist based in Australia and China, creating intuitive works that exist somewhere between abstraction, memory, emotion, and dream.
For many years, I struggled with the fear of beginning. I thought art needed meaning before it deserved to exist. I waited for the perfect idea, the perfect feeling, the perfect version of myself. Most of the time, nothing began.
Ugly Art started as a quiet rebellion against that fear.
I began allowing myself to create without expectation — to make something imperfect, strange, unfinished, even ugly. Instead of chasing beauty, I focused on movement. Instead of asking whether the work was “good,” I simply stayed with it long enough for something honest to appear.
Many of my works grow this way:
from random marks,
from emotional fragments,
from shapes that feel more discovered than designed.
Sometimes they become creatures.
Sometimes landscapes.
Sometimes something that cannot be named.
Alongside my abstract work, I also create poetic Biblical pieces and printed cards inspired by scripture, symbolism, longing, grief, tenderness, and the human desire for transcendence. I am less interested in illustrating religion than in exploring what remains after words, silence, faith, and emotion meet each other.
Butterflies appear often in my work.
To me, they represent fragile transformation — brief beauty that exists without needing to justify itself.
Everything in this shop is part of an ongoing practice:
not perfection,
but presence.
Not certainty,
but willingness.
Thank you for being here.