Via Li is a Chinese-born painter based in California. She holds an MFA in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a BFA in Textile Design from Donghua University in Shanghai.

Working with acrylic, charcoal, and stained unprimed canvas, Li explores emotion as a physical and atmospheric force capable of transforming the body, space, and perception. Her paintings move between abstraction and figuration, combining fragmented bodies, gestural lines, fluid washes, and open fields of
color.

Li’s work has been exhibited at Sulfur Studios and Gutstein Gallery in Savannah, Hilliard Gallery in Kansas City, Las Laguna Art Gallery in California, and in international online exhibitions presented by Art Fluent, Arts to Hearts Project, Gallerium, and DAB Art Co.

In 2026, Li was appointed a Presidential Alumni Atelier Ambassador by the Savannah College of Art and Design and undertook a two-month painting residency at SCAD Lacoste in France to develop a new body of large-scale paintings and works on paper.

My work investigates emotion as a force that acts upon the body and its surrounding space. Rather than treating emotion as an internal or private state, I explore how it can create pressure, distortion, distance, and transformation—altering the way a body occupies and responds to its environment.

I work with acrylic washes and charcoal on unprimed canvas and paper. Fluid color is allowed to stain, spread, and settle into the surface, while charcoal lines gather, fragment, and interrupt emerging forms. Figures appear only partially: a body may dissolve into atmosphere, become compressed by the space
around it, or remain suspended between emergence and disappearance.

My process begins without a fixed composition. Through layering, erasure, staining, and gestural drawing, I respond to shifts in the image as they occur. This uncertainty is essential to the work. It allows bodily forms and surrounding fields to develop as interdependent forces rather than as separate figure and
background.

The paintings do not describe specific narratives. Instead, they create emotional spaces in which vulnerability, restraint, resistance, and release can be experienced physically. I am interested in the unstable moment when an emotion becomes visible—not through facial expression or story, but through weight, movement, tension, and atmosphere.

• Inner Sense – Art Fluent, Online, 2023
• Emerging Woman Artist Award Show – Arts to Hearts Project, Online, 2023
• Lexicon – Sulfur Studios, Savannah, Georgia, USA, 2023
• AQUA – Gallerium, Online, 2023
• Art in the Time of Corona, Vol. 3 – DAB Art Co., Online, 2022
• White Elephant VIII – Sulfur Studios, Savannah, Georgia, USA, 2022
• That’s a Wrap! – Gutstein Gallery, Savannah, Georgia, USA, 2022
• Contemporary Abstraction – Hilliard Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, 2022
• Artistic Independence: Abstract – Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, California, USA, 2022
• SCAD Open Studio – Savannah College of Art and Design, Online, 2021

• Presidential Alumni Atelier Ambassador – Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Alumni Atelier Residency, Lacoste, France, 2026
• Selected Artist, Emerging Woman Artist Award Show – Arts to Hearts Project, 2023
  
  

Works held in private collections in the United States and China.

• In the Spotlight: Via Li – Women United Art Magazine, Issue XIV, Summer 2026
• Rising Stars: Meet Via Li – VoyageSavannah Magazine, 14 November 2023
• Meet Via Li | Artist – Shoutout Atlanta, 15 March 2023
• The Unexpected Between Beauty and Pain: Savannah-Based Painter Via Li – Li Tang Community, 27 January 2023
• Life & Work with Via Li – VoyageSavannah Magazine, 8 March 2022
• Meet Via Li – Bold Journey
• Meet Via Li – CanvasRebel Magazine
• My Creative Life with Artists and Creators: Episode 109 – Via Li – My Creative Life Podcast, 20 March 2022