We were lucky to catch up with Angela Su recently and have shared our conversation below.

Angela, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Since childhood, I had loved to draw. As time went by, the social conditioning from society led me to focus more on material world pursuits. I spent almost a decade on and off in the automotive industry, working as a Realtor, and dipped my toes in various fields. However, none of the occupations I had tried resonated with me. I had always had a feeling of curiosity to realize what it was that fulfilled my soul. I later learned that I was not living in alignment with my true nature. I was what you’d call a “Projector” according to Human Design, which was a “non-energy” type. My entire life I had tried to live as a “go-go-go” person. We’re not all designed to operate the same way, and knowing this got me to ask myself where and what it was that allowed my true nature to flow the most freely.

A few years ago, I experienced what is called a “dark night of the soul”- when the “you” in which you have always identified with, collapses. All the illusions that I had allowed to construct meaning in my life- who I was, “where I was supposed to be in life”, what career I was supposed to be doing, and belief systems from the outside world that I had held on to for so long unconsciously, just shattered. The second we are born, expectations are put on us, oftentimes by family, friends, and the people in our lives. We are told who, what, and how we should be. We should be doing this, we should be doing that. Over time, the “real” us gets buried in all of these false beliefs, which have form strong neural pathways in our brain, and we start living our daily lives with all this programming going on in our subconscious that do not resonate with who we truly are. It took a lot of self-reflection, self-isolating, and what society would define as “failures” to come back to remembering what it was that allowed my energy to flow the most freely. One day, I came across a saying that goes somewhere along the lines of “your passion is what you loved doing as a child, you just have to remember it”. That’s when I got back into art.

On New Year’s Eve 2021, I decided to start drawing again. After a few days, the process was not quite resonating with me as much as I had hoped. I sent a few illustrations to my father, who had been an oil painter, who then asked me. “Why don’t you try abstract art?”. Not having much of an idea of what that was or how to do so, my father advised me to simply just paint, without focusing on the results. I got back into art, and began abstract painting in January of 2021. My passion for painting surprised me, as I finally realized what truly made me feel “free”.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in a small city called Claremont, California. I had always loved drawing since I was a child and won my first award in grade school. I am a “self- taught” artist; I don’t believe that abstract art is created through the application of “force” and “logic”. What I realized is that it is something that enters through you in the deepest moments of trust and surrender, and is not something that can be learned from a set of instructions in a “school”.

The path back to remembering my true self was not easy. Learning to reclaim my personal power, healing inner child wounds, working on removing subconscious blocks/limiting beliefs, learning to create new neural pathways, and learning to just “allow” have all played a part in helping me with overcoming challenges in life in general. I am grateful for the wisdom that I gained from the hardships. Earth is a school, and learning is a lifelong process.

Painting (abstract expressionism) has taught me that the less I try and control things, the better they turn out. This isn’t to say to not put in any effort, but more of just painting without forcing the result to look any certain way. I realized that when I have a structure and have an expectation of how the painting should turn out, they always come out not looking free, and have this “restricting” energy to them. When I quiet my thoughts and just surrender to being a channel for the energy to come through me, the intelligence knows what it’s doing. It doesn’t need my conscious mind to get in the way.

The message I would like to convey with my art is for us to remember the essence of who we truly are that exists when all the noise from our thoughts and the outside world are silenced. The presence that cannot be defined by words.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Art and creativity have no bounds. Back in the day, people understood that art was a necessity, and a part of daily life. Like how our physical bodies need to be fed with food, our souls need to be nourished with art. It wasn’t until later on that “art” became “labeled”, which then caused it to become something separate from us. The most rewarding aspect of painting for me is the ability to reconnect with the part of myself that has no limitations.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The soul has things that it wants to say. Just like how we should take care of our mental health and physical health, our spiritual health is also something that shouldn’t be neglected. I’d like my creative journey to be a reminder for that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.angela-su.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/angelasu/