How This Artist Balances Her Day Job and Art Career Successfully I Michele Leung

Women in Arts Network is thrilled to celebrate Michele Leung as our Artist of the Month. Michele’s journey into art is one of balance, discovery, and quiet transformation. Trained in the structured worlds of engineering and finance, she spent years honing precision and control yet something inside her always whispered for expression beyond numbers and rules. When she picked up a brush, she didn’t abandon that discipline; she learned to bend it into something expressive and deeply personal.

Her work now lives at the intersection of logic and feeling. With the eye of a careful draftsperson and the heart of an intuitive creator, Michele builds her compositions with patience, care, and attention. Each portrait carries both structure and soul figures rendered with quiet strength, layers of luminous colour, and a stillness that pulses with life.

In her Hong Kong studio, Michele paints to the rhythm of classical music, letting its flow guide her brush and quiet her mind. Through art, she has discovered lessons that no spreadsheet or deadline could teach: that meaning takes time, surrender can coexist with control, and true focus often feels like peace.

Let’s get to know Michele Leung more deeply through this interview, and discover how her precision transforms into poetry, patience, and quiet strength on the canvas.

Can you share your creative journey, how you developed your skills through either formal education or self-teaching? Who or what influenced you the most, and what has surprised you in that process?”  

My creative journey bridges the structured worlds of engineering and finance with the expressive depth of oil painting. While my formal education is technical, my artistic development has been guided by a dedicated studio practice and the invaluable mentorship of an instructor who has been essential to my growth. The greatest influence on my work is this fusion of perspectives: the analytical lens of my background, which sees the body as a structure of resilience, and the emotive, human-centric focus my mentor helped me unlock. The biggest surprise was discovering that this combination isn’t a compromise, but the source of my most authentic work.

Your compositions carry both precision and emotion. How do you navigate that tension between control and spontaneity while creating?

My process intentionally balances both. I begin with control meticulous drafting to build a structural foundation. This disciplined start then gives me the freedom to be spontaneous in the final layers, using expressive brushwork and color to capture the emotion and energy of the figure. The control allows the emotion to feel grounded and resonant.

Walk us through one artwork that felt especially personal or difficult to make. What emotional or intellectual process guided it from concept to completion?

The Unyielding Gaze’ explores a strength that is self-contained. The figure is turned away, but her gaze over her own shoulder shifts the power. She is not looking at the viewer, nor is she disconnected. She is looking at a world beyond them assessing a horizon only she can see. The piece captures that moment of profound focus where one’s attention, not their confrontation, becomes the ultimate form of resilience.

What does your workspace look like when you’re in full creative flow? Do you have any rituals, sounds, or objects that ground you in that process?

It is a functional space of organized chaos—canvases, brushes, and pigments. My grounding ritual is classical music, which is a language I understand intimately from my years at piano and cello. It’s the catalyst that sparks both energy and focus, creating a rhythm that guides my brushstrokes and helps me disappear into the creative flow.

Many of your pieces feel introspective quiet, but powerful. Do you start with an image in your head, or do the emotions lead the imagery?

I always begin with a clear, compelling image in my mind a specific posture, a turn of the head, a play of light on the body. Then, as I paint, the emotion infuses the work, guiding my choices in colour and brushstroke to amplify the quiet power I first envisioned.

You’ve mentioned that creating art brings you calm and focus. In what ways has your practice taught you about patience, surrender, or self-understanding?  

My professional background in a high-stress, results-driven field in finance conditioned me to value immediate outcomes and maximum efficiency. My art practice is a deliberate counterpoint to that; it is my sanctuary for calm and focus. The process itself is a lesson in patience—from the meticulous mixing of colors to the slow build-up of translucent layers, all requiring a surrender to the painting’s own timeline, which can unfold over weeks. This has taught me a profound form of self-understanding: that some of the most meaningful outcomes cannot be rushed, and that true focus is found not in the pressure of a deadline, but in the depth of engagement with the work itself.

As you evolve, how do you challenge yourself to move beyond comfort zones experimenting with new mediums, subjects, or conceptual depth? 

I actively seek to capture a wider, more complex spectrum of human energy and emotion in my portraits, moving beyond simple representation. This pursuit pushes me to experiment with more nuanced colour palettes, dynamic compositions, and a deeper conceptual exploration of the stories behind a gaze.

How do you think about the “legacy” of your work? Do you document or package your work in a particular way to help future viewers or curators understand it?  

While I view legacy as an evolving concept, my focus is on building a clear and professional foundation for my work. I meticulously document each piece with high-quality photography and detailed notes to ensure the artistic intention and story behind it are preserved for future understanding.

What advice would you give to emerging artists who are trying to develop their voice, sustain their practice, and navigate the art-world today?  

Build your practice with the patience of an oil painter layer by layer. Consistency in the studio will always open more doors than any single moment of inspiration.

Congratulations on being featured as Artist of the Month! In what ways do you see this milestone helping to elevate your career and create fresh opportunities for your practice?

This feature is an incredible honor, and it holds special significance for me. Balancing a full-time career in finance with my artistic practice is a journey of passion and discipline, so this recognition from the art community is profoundly encouraging. Living in Hong Kong a dynamic, international hub that bridges Eastern and Western cultures makes this milestone feel like a powerful catalyst. I see it as a crucial platform to reach a wider audience, connect with fellow artists and curators, and open doors to future collaborations and exhibitions. My hope is that this recognition builds momentum, helping to elevate my art from a private passion to a more public and sustained part of my professional life.

As we wrap up our conversation with Michele Leung, we’re reminded that art often begins in the space where balance lives between what we know and what we feel. Michele’s journey shows us that creativity doesn’t mean abandoning structure; it can grow from it, turning discipline into devotion and careful planning into quiet calm.

Her paintings reveal the subtle strength of patience the kind that comes from letting emotion take its time within a frame of order. Through her practice, Michele shows us that focus can be a kind of trust, and that beauty often emerges not from rush or impulse, but from the willingness to stay, layer by layer, with what matters most.

Celebrating Michele as our Artist of the Month is also a celebration of every artist learning to speak multiple languages at once logic and feeling, structure and flow, precision and wonder. Her work reminds us that stillness has its own strength, precision can be poetic, and true freedom often comes from slowing down and creating with intention.