Meet the Artist | Qiuxiang Liu (Rainy Tong )
- Eleni Doulgeraki
- Nov 19
- 8 min read
In Qiuxiang Liu’s world, the body breathes like a landscape—wild, erotic, and endlessly transforming. Born in China and now based in London, Liu (also known as Rainy Tong) paints through the lens of queer ecology, where desire and decay coexist in tender defiance. Her canvases, saturated with the rhythm of the seasons, dissolve boundaries between self and nature, intimacy and violence, beauty and rot. The female form in her work is not an object of gaze but a vessel of love and resistance, pulsing with air, fruit, and soil. Moving between cultures and materials—ink, acrylic, oil, and even organic matter—Liu reimagines painting as an act of regeneration, a living dialogue between the body and the earth.
Q1. Tell me a few words about yourself in an intro— how did your artistic journey begin? Was there a particular moment or influence that made you realize you wanted to be an artist?
Rainy: I’m a China-born and London-based painter. I graduated from Painting (MA) of the Royal College of Art in 2025. My practice centers on the female body and engages with queer identity, spanning painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and poetry.
I investigate selfhood through the lens of queer ecology drawing inspiration from both nature and the female form in bold entanglements, engaging with themes of beauty, intimacy and sexuality. In my works, the female body is not a passive object of gaze but a vessel of love and desire — breathing with air, light, fruit, and soil. Desire, growth, decay, and regeneration all weave themselves into the texture of her work.
I’ve never doubted that I was born to be a painter. Since I was a child, I’ve been obsessed with the ecstatic moments when I could forget everything while painting. Painting makes me feel blessed, loved and as strong as fire burning through every part of me.
Painting for me, is a gentle yet radical resistance against the societal fixation on form and definition. In my paintings, the body becomes a wild landscape — erotic, violent, tender, and fluid — turning upon itself like the endless cycles of the seasons.
Q2. How has your background or culture influenced your art?
Rainy: I was born in China, where women have often been invisible in a patriarchal society. I never fully realized I might be bisexual until I moved to London in 2023 and started engaging with queer ecology. In China, sexuality is usually seen in strict male/female binaries, so exploring my own queer self has led me to focus on the female body through a queer ecological lens.
Chinese culture has also deeply shaped my visual language. The emptiness and spatial rhythm of traditional Chinese ink painting are deeply ingrained in me and continue to inspire my work. Much like Chinese landscape ink painting reflect the artist’s inner world, my paintings are in some ways self-portraits — a playfulscape drawn from my imagination and inner life.
The immigration background has further influenced my practice. Living between languages, cultures, and ways of seeing has led me to think of identity as an ecology — constantly adapting, shifting, and evolving. My works emerge from this fluid space, blending the poetic sensibility of the East, the embodied awareness of femininity, and the spatial freedom of Western painting.
Q3. How would you describe your art in a few words?
Rainy: Self portrait, queer ecology, intimacy and sexuality.
In my works, the female body is not a passive object of gaze but a vessel of love and desire — breathing with air, light, fruit, and soil. Desire, growth, decay, and regeneration are interwoven into the texture of my paintings. My current series draws on the poetic acts of ‘blossoming' and ‘decay’ in spring and autumn, constructing a playfulscape where the female body is reimagined in erotic, poetic, and violent ways. The bodies in her works are entangled in ambitious lines, wild drips, and explosive brushstrokes. They are faceless, boneless, and amorphous. They inhabit a space between love and death, desire and dissolution, intimacy and danger.
Q4. What materials or mediums do you enjoy working with the most? And what inspires you ( emotions, places, people etc) ?
Rainy: I enjoy experimenting with different ways to explore my own language. I usually use acrylic and ink sketches on paper and oil on large canvases. Acrylic paints are easy to carry and dry quickly which allows me to paint the shifting seasons in nature. I am also fascinated by the large splash marks of black ink in traditional Chinese painting — both materials allow me to paint completely free.
On canvas, I typically start with acrylic and ink to build the background, then layer in oils to add depth and texture. I always paint intuitively, so I rarely transfer sketches directly into my oil paintings, but my nature sketches inform and interact a lot with my larger works. Besides, I’m experimenting with the adventure of making my own paints from dry pigments.
Q5. How do you decide on color palettes, themes, or textures?
Rainy: Spring and autumn are my paradise in London. The poetic acts from these two seasons-Blossoming and Decay-inspired my current series Under Our Breath.
I study the colours from spring and autumn. When the light shifts and the air changes, the landscape overflows with colour. This autumn, I moved to Richmond — a place lush with trees and open skies. When sunlight filters through the leaves, my favourite thing is to take my paints and sketchbook into the woods. With my feet pressing into the soft earth and fallen leaves, my eyes are dazzled by the layered hues of autumn. In those moments, I feel deeply grateful to have a painter’s eyes — it is through these eyes that I am able to see the world anew.
Under the sky, nature becomes a vast canvas. I often see in it the same colors and gestures that appear on the canvases of Joan Mitchell and Cecily Brown: bright yellow and earthy brown sweeping across the landscape, interwoven with tender pale greens. Slender streaks of caramel drift in the wind, while clusters of orange-red berries hang like drops of mercury. Leaves glow golden-orange in the sun, layered with earthy reds and deep purples. Burnt yellows spread outward, wrapping around vines still pulsing with green vitality — grey-green, pale green, white-green, yellow-green, orange-green, oily green, deep green, blue-green, violet-green…
In front of endless colours in nature, I only transform things that the eyes decide to do and make sure my palette won’t fall silent.
Q6. What was the last exhibition you participated in? Any highlights or memorable moments?
Rainy: The most recent exhibition I participated in was Voices from the Undefined at the Saatchi Gallery in September 2025. I was on holiday and missed the opening, but I managed to see the exhibition before it closed. It was unforgettable to have my work shown there. One visitor even found my Instagram after seeing my pieces, just to tell me how much they loved my work and enjoyed looking at it-it was incredibly heartening and made me feel truly blessed as a painter.
Q7. How does it feel to see your work displayed in public spaces?
Rainy: I feel proud of each piece when it is exhibited, and I am deeply affected by the energy it generates which continues to support my practice long after the show ends. Once a painting is finished in my studio, it no longer belongs to me — it belongs to the audience. Showing work publicly allows it to exist fully, interacting with viewers and the world, which I see as the true responsibility of an artist.
Q8. How has your style evolved over time?
Rainy: I’m always changing. I would feel anxious when my work stays the same for too long. I love the process of painting because it allows possibilities to emerge. I am always experimenting with different ways to paint. My style evolves constantly, shaped by new life experiences and the painting techniques I discover along the way. Yet, these changes always remain within the fluid boundaries of my own visual language.
Q9. Could you tell me about your biggest artistic influences or inspirations?
Rainy: I draw inspiration from both Eastern and Western culture — Chinese traditional art, Western contemporary art, and nature have all been important mentors. But my greatest influence always comes from my own life itself. For example, last month I fell into a canal and narrowly survived — an experience that forced me to confront life and death in a way I never had before. I know this moment will influence my work, sooner or later.
Q10. Are you currently working on something you could share with us? Like an upcoming exhibition or project.
Rainy: I've recently begun a new series of paintings, trying to reconnect with myself and rediscover what it means to create from that place. I’ve been reflecting on who I am and what a self-portrait truly means in my work. This process feels like a return — back to the origins of why and how I paint. Perhaps I’ve wandered too far, and now it’s time to circle back to the beginning.
For exhibitions, I don’t have any exhibitions planned for the rest of the year. I want to focus on painting for a while. However, I am part of the RCA Women Artist Collective, a dynamic group of emerging women and non-binary artists connected through the Royal College of Art’s Painting program. We are preparing a collaborative exhibition for next year, which is very exciting and something I am looking forward to.
Short BIO
Qiuxiang Liu (Rainy Tong) is a London-based painter (b. 1986, China) who holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. She is also the founder of Da Tong Mural Artlab in Shenzhen, China. Her multidisciplinary practice centers on the female body and engages with queer identity, spanning painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and poetry.
In July 2025, Rainy held her solo exhibition With Rainy Eyes at RuptureXIBIT in London, following her first solo show While Repeating I Love You, Nothing Will Die! in July 2022 in Shenzhen, China. She has also participated in numerous residencies and group exhibitions in London and internationally, including Voices from the Undefined at the Saatchi Gallery, London, 2025; 17 Points of Departure at Safe House, London, 2025; and The Summer Day at Silian Gallery, London, 2025, among others. Her performance work Ghost Touch and poetry piece Eat the Moment were published in the book I Am Human and presented at the ICA Book Fair by Wild Parlour in 2025.
Rainy investigates selfhood through the lens of queer ecology, drawing inspiration from both nature and the female form. She depicts the female body in bold entanglements, engaging with themes of self-portrait, intimacy and sexuality. In her works, the female body is not a passive object of gaze but a vessel of love and desire — breathing with air, light, fruit, and soil. Desire, growth, decay, and regeneration all weave themselves into the texture of her work.
Rainy's current series takes its cue from the poetic acts of ‘blossoming' and ‘decay’, constructing the playfulscapes where the female body is reimagined in erotic, poetic, and violent ways. The bodies in her works are entangled in ambitious lines, wild drips, and explosive brushstrokes. They are faceless, boneless, and amorphous. They inhabit a space between love and death, desire and dissolution, intimacy and danger.
Rainy’s practice is moving toward greater abstraction and material exploration. She draws inspiration from the emptiness and spatial rhythm of traditional Chinese ink painting, integrating its sensibility into her evolving visual language. At the same time, she incorporates natural processes into her work—For instance, uses organic materials such as apples whose slow rotting, collapse, and bleed into raw canvas become traces of time — a living dialogue between body and nature, revealing the desires and ruptures that lie beneath the surface of her painted worlds.
Links for her work:
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