5 min read

Coral Ye Chen: Watercolor Has Always Been in My Heart

For Coral Ye Chen, watercolor has never been simply a painting medium. It has been a quiet thread running through the many chapters of her life, from growing up in a family of photographers and discovering color as a child, to studying fine arts, teaching, traveling, raising a family, and eventually finding her way back to painting again and again.

Today, Coral lives in Canada, where she continues to paint and teach watercolor. In recent years, she has become especially drawn to portrait painting, looking beyond physical likeness to capture the stories, emotions, and traces of life behind each face.

Where It All Began

If you asked me when I first started drawing, I would find it difficult to give you an exact answer.

I was born into a family of photographers. My grandfather, Shao Du, was a photographer in the 1930s who ran a photography studio in Wenzhou, China, specializing in landscape and portrait photography. As a child, I often accompanied my family on photography trips, gradually developing an appreciation for beauty and art through those moments of observing the world around me.

Soft white hydrangea blooms rendered in expressive watercolor technique by Coral.

My mother also worked at the photography studio, where she hand-colored black-and-white photographs. To keep me occupied when I was three, she would give me a few discarded photographs, some cotton swabs, and oil paints, and let me color the photographs myself.

To her surprise, I could sit there for an entire morning.

Looking back, that may have been my earliest introduction to painting. There was no formal training, just spending time with colors every day. Perhaps that is why I became especially sensitive to color from an early age.

From Fine Arts to a Life of Many Roles

Later, I attended a vocational high school specializing in fine arts and went on to study Fine Arts at Jianghan University.

After graduation, my life took me in several different directions. I worked as a photographer and later in publishing, designing book covers and working as an editor.

After getting married, I moved with my family between the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Today, I live in Canada and am a mother of five.

Photography, design, publishing, family, and moving between different places all became part of my life. Life continued to change, but painting never truly left me.

From Teaching Children to Understanding Why We Paint

While I was at university, I started teaching children to draw so I could earn a little spending money of my own. My students ranged from eight or nine years old to teenagers.

Young students of Coral proudly displaying framed snowman watercolor paintings.

Later, I met a particularly memorable student. She was a graduate student pursuing a PhD in mathematics at the University of Michigan, yet she came to paint every week.
I asked her why.

She told me that after spending her days surrounded by numbers and formulas, painting allowed her to step away from the world of mathematics for a while and quiet her mind.

“Painting is my best form of rest.”

I have never forgotten those words.

They made me realize that art does not necessarily have to be about competitions, achievements, or a career. For some people, painting itself can simply be a source of relaxation and healing.

Coral with her adult watercolor students holding their finished landscape paintings outdoor.

Over time, more and more adults began coming to me to learn watercolor. I naturally transitioned from teaching children to teaching adults.

Painting alongside others and sharing my understanding of art also gave me the opportunity to continually rediscover myself.

Why Watercolor Became My Language

I love watercolor because it is light, transparent, delicate, and poetic. It is also easy to carry and particularly well suited to painting while traveling.

There was another, much more practical reason.

I used to paint with oils, but the smell of oil paints aggravated my chronic rhinitis, so I gradually had to move away from oil painting.

Watercolor portrait titled The Keeper of Early Dreams featuring a child with feather headdress by Coral.

Unexpectedly, after leaving oils behind, I became more and more fascinated by watercolor.

I feel that the language of watercolor reflects my own personality, pure and transparent, yet full of movement and changes that cannot always be predicted.

It requires both control and letting go.

For me, watercolor is therefore more than a painting medium. It has become a language through which I can express myself.

From Painting a Person to Painting Their Story

In recent years, I have become increasingly drawn to painting people.

Watercolor portrait titled Weathered Grace depicting a smiling man with glasses and a cap by Coral. — *Weathered Grace, created by Coral*

I have always felt that a portrait is not enough if it only captures someone's physical likeness. Without a story and a sense of soul, a person can never truly come alive in a painting.

I enjoy observing a person's eyes, wrinkles, and expressions, but I also want to understand the story behind them.

Once, I met an elderly fisherman whose face carried the marks of years spent in the wind and sun, along with a quiet sense of peace that comes with having lived through many years.

I later created Weathered Grace based on him.

What I truly wanted to paint was not the wrinkles themselves, but the years behind them.

A Life Across Many Places, but Painting Never Left Me

Looking back on my life, I have lived in many places: Wenzhou, Kunming, Wuhan, Shekou in Shenzhen, as well as the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Today, I call Canada home.

Each place brought different experiences and became part of the person I am today.

Life has taken me through photography, design, family, teaching, and many different roles. There were also times when I temporarily put down my brushes.

But even when painting was not at the center of my life, it was never truly gone.

Perhaps the places I lived, the people I met, and the experiences I went through were all quietly becoming part of the way I would eventually see and paint the world.

Finding Myself Through Watercolor

If I could say one thing to someone who has just picked up a watercolor brush but feels that they are not good enough, I would say:

“Find yourself through watercolor.”

There is no need to rush to meet someone else’s standards, nor to measure your love for painting by the results.

Let the water and pigments flow. Through each attempt, find your own sense of freedom and your own way of expressing yourself.

I have traveled to many places, met many people, and experienced many different roles in life. Those periods when I seemed to step away from painting were quietly becoming part of my journey, eventually transforming into the colors and stories within my paintings, and into that small, beautiful light that belongs to me.

Watercolor painting titled Radiance of a Smile depicting a person with a lamb by Coral.

After traveling such a long and winding road, I have come to understand more and more:

No one can stand in the way of what I love.

“In search of myself” does not mean traveling toward some distant destination. It means, after all the twists and turns of life, learning to hear the voice within again.

And that voice has always been clear and quiet. It has never truly gone away:

Watercolor has always been in my heart.