As queen of the kooky and macabre, Xue Wang is known for her fairy tale paintings. The former fashionista fuses supernatural themes and a sugar-sweet colour palette to create irresistible Lowbrow Pop Surrealism pieces. For each character, she sketches out the faces before adding makeup, hairstyles, clothes and accessories. Xue uses oils on board and paints at home on her easel, which each painting taking between 80 and 120 hours to complete. She applies multiple layers of glaze, while the carved frames lend her work a Baroque aesthetic.

Growing up in China under the government-enforced one-child policy, Xue created a world for herself with her dolls and toys in lieu of the siblings she would never have.

“I love vintage pin-up imagery, film noir and silent films. We cannot escape the past and our sweet yesterdays, whether imaginary of real. They are my repository.”