Felicia Chiao’s illustrated characters visualise the looming presence of our intimate anxieties

An industrial designer turned full-time illustrator, Felicia Chiao has always had an interest in drawing “ever since I was a very little kid”, she says. Back in 2019 the artist started doing a drawing a week and hasn’t stopped since… “It was never really the plan to do art full time but it’s been working out!” she tells us, as her intricate warm-toned drawings chronicling the heavily relatable “humanoid character” she illustrates, have gained a large following online.

Hiding up on a shelf, or looming over a tall window, alongside Felicia’s human-like figure, a small black bean character is ever present in her works. Representing her relationship with mental health and anxiety, this dark round being initially started off as a depiction of the artist’s stomach: “I live with IBS and my stomach would always flare up when my mental health was bad… I would draw the bean on days I wasn’t feeling too great”, she explains. Always depicted in relation to her main “humanoid character” the dark looming figure varies in size and visibility, depending on the day. Opening a path for empathy and connection, the artist feels that the human qualities of her illustrated figure, alongside its personified anxiety, are a point of connection for her audience: “I think most humans are naturally a little empathetic, so when they see a figure in my work they are able to relate to it in some way”, says Felicia.

Previously drawn inside her figure, the dark bean-like form was often depicted as something trapped inside the character’s body, representing the chronic and often inescapable health issues the artist experienced as a result of her anxiety. Depicted now as part of the furniture of her scenes, sometimes hidden or in plain sight the black bean still remains intimately present, never leaving her character unaccompanied: “As I’ve gotten older I’ve been able to cope with my mental health better so I draw it outside of the body now… but it’s still around and that’s ok”, Felicia tells us.

Working in her distinctive brown-toned sketchbooks, Felicia loses herself in the detailed line work of the architectural compositions her soft characters inhabit. Taking inspiration from the construction of her immediate environments, “light, colour, shape, and texture in everyday things”, always end up influencing the construction of the spaces her characters inhabit. Illustrating what it feels like to be stuck in a slump, have your anxious thoughts creep up on you or be plagued by an unidentifiable sense of guilt, the illustrator isn’t just interested in the intricate techniques of her drawings but in “chasing how to depict an emotion or feeling using these tools”, she says.

Although she has connected to many through her representations of anxiety and chronic illness, Felicia never sets out to connect to any specific audience with her work: “I draw because I need to; everyone else is just along for the ride”, she says. From channelling the vulnerability of her experiences into her drawings, she often has people reach out, having found themselves in her work. Felicia says: “I’ve also had everyone from art teachers to therapists using my work to either educate or aid in their practices.” With many sharing that her illustrated works “capture feelings they are not able to articulate”, the artist’s visualisations provide a comforting reassurance to anybody with an anxious, busy brain.