12 Delicate Oil Portraits Reflecting Surreal Innocence By Artist Wenyi Zhu
Wenyi Zhu’s ethereal brushwork and delicate colour palette blend together on the canvas to form sweetly innocent figures. The visual artist attempts to explore the poetic tension between stillness and vulnerability in her oil paintings by blending figurative imagery, surreal undertones, and classical restraint.
Based in the USA, Zhu has been dabbling in art since her childhood days. Her artistry often reflects the subtle emotional weight of memory and dreams. Her latest project, The Fragile Glitter, is a “series of oil portraits that reimagine porcelain dolls as symbols of purity—perfect, delicate, and quietly luminous”. The artist mentioned, “My current practice began to take shape over the past several years as I started exploring emotional, imaginary figuration and painting serene, dreamlike worlds”.
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
Speaking about the oil portraits she has been recently working on, Zhu elaborated, “Through these silent, radiant figures, the series reflects my desire to capture a kind of beauty that is innocent, fragile, and fleeting—the kind that makes me want to paint and to preserve it before it fades”.
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
Explaining the influences that inspired her delicate brushwork and surreal atmospheres, Zhu divulged, “ For me, art begins with a thought—an idea, a feeling, or a quiet observation that grows slowly in the background of life. Often, these are rooted in childhood memory, solitude, or silent questions about existence. I see myself as a translator, turning inner experiences into visual language. Composition, colour, light, and brushwork become my grammar—tools to make the invisible felt. Style can be borrowed, technique can be learned, but the way one sees the world is deeply personal. I paint to understand that vision—and to share it”.
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
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Image Source: WenyiZhu
The self-taught artist, who transitioned from science to oil paints, blends classical techniques with nostalgic scenes to portray emotional moments that linger. She explained, “I often begin with a visual emotion—an image I feel rather than think. I may start by sketching by hand and creating colour thumbnails. From there, I translate the idea into oil painting, allowing silence, space, and symbolic elements to gradually emerge. I often linger over a painting for a long time, refining it until it precisely conveys the feeling or story I want to tell”.
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