Traces of Being: Stories in Ink and Coffee explores emotion as a lived, ongoing experience, embracing human imperfection as an essential and meaningful presence. Through flowing ink lines and layered coffee washes, the works trace moments of tenderness, resilience, and quiet strength. Ink carries discipline, memory, and embodied tradition; coffee, drawn from daily ritual, introduces warmth, unpredictability, and intimacy. Together, they create surfaces where control and surrender coexist, allowing emotion to unfold through subtle gesture and accumulated marks.

In a time when speed, digital production, and perfection dominate, this practice affirms the importance of slowing down and continuing to work by hand and heart. Irregularities, stains, and pauses are not corrected but honoured, reflecting the fragile, imperfect, and deeply human nature of lived experience. The act of making becomes a form of care—an insistence on preserving tactile knowledge, presence, and what we already hold.

Newly completed horse paintings celebrate the Chinese New Year and are inspired by the spirit of the Fire Horse, symbolising energy, vitality, independence, and transformation. Expressed through dynamic mark-making and heightened gesture, these works carry momentum, courage, and intensity.

Born in the Year of the Horse, the artist approaches these paintings as both symbolic and personal. The horse emerges as a trace of identity, inner fire, resilience, and the ongoing force of becoming.

Artist bio:

Xin Harper-Little is a painter and drawing artist whose practice explores the human experience through instinctive mark-making and layered processes. Born in China, she developed a love for life drawing from a young age. Working primarily with ink and coffee across a range of surfaces, her work reflects themes of emotion, gender, culture, and the natural world. Some works emerge spontaneously through bold, energetic gestures, while others evolve slowly through patience and accumulation. This duality shapes a practice rooted in intuition, openness, and transformation, allowing form and meaning to unfold organically through lived experience.

Instagram: @xharperlittle_art

Preview: 5 February 6-8pm

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Ink and Coffee Creative Workshop

Friday February 27