Artist Spotlight: Qinlin Yang

Qinlin Yang’s practice moves between drawing and printmaking. After completing an MA in Cambridge, she now works as a freelance artist. Mezzotint printing is central to her work, both as a technical process and as a way of describing a particular mood.

Qinlin connects the medium to her experience of living in London, explaining "I work in mezzotint because it reflects the gloomy weather, and the feeling of being an immigrant and living away from home."

Her approach to mezzotint is practical and process-based. The method begins with preparing a copper plate. While some artists aim for an even surface, Qinlin instead uses a rocker to create a background texture on the copper. She then uses a burnisher to draw an image onto the plate, before it is inked and printed.

Although she describes the process as fairly simple, it can take a long time to build up the image, so she often works on a smaller scale, with the smallest works being just 7cm square. The scale of her work is also determined by the composition and the feeling she is trying to convey through her images.

Her drawings are developed as part of a daily sketching practice, capturing what she sees around her. Although much of her work takes place in busy public spaces, she notes that this can also create a feeling of detachment and alienation. She is especially drawn to locations where people are moving through the city, like train stations and the Underground, “the places where people come and go.”

Qinlin’s drawings are often made quickly, in contrast to the laborious printmaking process. Rather than planning the work in advance, she works intuitively, explaining, “When I'm sketching, I don't think about a lot. I just catch the first thing I see.” This short timescale allows her to respond directly to changing light and weather conditions.

She prefers direct observation over working from photographs to include the physical and sensory aspects of being in a place. “I want to show I was in that moment,” she explains. “I can feel the wind, the people, the crowds, hear the music, and catch the sunlight.” Writing is also part of her process when she first arrives in a new place. Her feelings, the things people say to her, and the different way of life are all inspiration for her work.

A consistent theme in Qinlin’s work is the experience of living in a place that is not home. She describes a mixed sense of belonging and distance that comes from being in a large city. These ideas have also inspired her work in other cities. During a residency in Germany, she made work about leaving home and what is left behind. The setting reinforced these questions, as a town where many buildings had been abandoned, and “it had become like a ghost town.”

The response from local audiences connected her own themes of movement and absence with local experiences of change. Remembering a conversation with someone who had grown up there, she recalls “they used to have a lot of community and public spaces… but these things just gradually disappeared.”

Qinlin’s process is fairly structured, but unexpected results also play a role. One recent work evolved out of a mistake. After forgetting to wash the printing plate, she returned to find that the ink had dried on it and created a new texture. She thought the plate was ruined “because it left all these dots on the image.”

However, rather than starting again, she decided to develop the print further, connecting it with her experience of a winter’s day on Tottenham Court Road. The additional texture merged the image of the crowded city centre with a memory of the snow. This has led her to consider embracing chance and working more experimentally in future.

Qinlin is currently spending time in Bristol, using it as an opportunity to respond to a different city. She is interested in how she can represent the different feelings associated with a place in her work, paying attention to subtle shifts in atmosphere.

While she waits for a space at Spike Island’s open access print studio, she is continuing to make observational sketches, alongside taking photographs on her phone to develop a series of soft pastel drawings. Once she has a studio, she’ll turn the drawings into mezzotints, and is also planning to incorporate painting into her process to create a new mark-making system.

But whichever medium she’s working in, whether drawing, print or painting, all her works are connected through a focus on observation and experience. As she explains, “I think it’s important to show the world we live in.”

Qinlin Yang’s work is available to view and purchase at https://exhibtd.com/artists/qinlin-yang

Featured image: Qinlin Yang, Tottenham Court Road II, Mezzotint, 2025