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Chloe Loung

In January, the American-born artist Nissa Kauppila was accepted into the Hong Kong Artists Association, a professional organisation founded in 2014 to promote traditional Chinese culture, becoming the first non-ethnic-Chinese practitioner admitted into its midst.
The association chairman, Lam Tianxing, an ink painter, has high praise for the 43-year-old Lantau Island resident.
“When I first saw her work, I was particularly impressed,” he says. “She possesses exquisite painting skills while conveying a uniquely Eastern artistic atmosphere – ethereal and full of vitality.”
What makes her work distinctive is not that she has simply adopted a Chinese aesthetic, but that she has fused it with Western techniques into a single, cohesive vision.
From the East, she has absorbed the technical rigour of classical brush-and-ink painting, combining the flowing line work, washes of colour and the philosophical use of negative space. Executed with Chinese brushes on rice paper, her earlier works are also anchored by a Western realism that recalls a naturalist’s field guide.

Her birds and butterflies are not mere poetic abstractions; they are biologically accurate specimens, capturing the individual barbs of a feather or the articulated joints of a leg with scientific precision. The result is a body of work that exists in the liminal space between hemispheres.
For Kauppila, membership goes beyond opportunities to take part in exhibitions and cross-border exchanges with mainland China. It is a milestone and symbol of belonging after a journey of more than a decade that saw the Vermont native of Finnish and Swedish descent letting go of everything she knew for the unknown of China.
Kauppila grew up in rural Vermont, on a small lake tucked into the mountains near the Canadian border. Her father, an avid birdwatcher, instilled in her a love of the natural world that would later become the central subject of her art.
“Our house was a little lake cottage with big sliding glass doors that overlooked the lake,” she recalls. “That was my television screen.”

She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and, after graduation, worked in broadcast journalism and education, teaching and being an administrator until 2015. Yet, she never truly put down the brush, often creating gifts for friends and family. After a community art show led to gallery representation in New York and Boston, she realised just how much she wanted to paint.
In 2014, her brother – who had moved to mainland China to study – asked her to visit.
“When I arrived, there was just something I can’t explain,” she says. “Something just felt right.”
Within months, she had resigned from her teaching post in the United States and moved to Foshan, a city in Guangdong province and the historical home of Cantonese opera and wing chun kung fu.
In a radical act of commitment, Kauppila discarded her Western materials – cotton vellum, gouache and familiar brushes – replacing them with rice paper and Chinese inks.
“I thought, what’s the point of being here if I can’t let go of my previous materials?” she says.

All the while, Kauppila tried to assimilate into her new life in mainland China.
“I became very used to being the only white person in a room,” she says with a laugh. “But I made incredible connections, possibly because of that. It was an oddity to have this American artist in Foshan.”
Word of the new American artist in town spread, and soon she received a WeChat friend request from an older gentleman: Lin Bo, a celebrated painter on silk well into his retirement years.
He invited her to his studio and, despite having never taught a foreigner before, offered to train her in classical Chinese art. She took her apprenticeship seriously: six-hour sessions of painting nothing but bamboo shoots were the norm.
“He would put the paper out, show me one brushstroke and say, ‘OK, cover all these pages with that stroke. Go,’” she says. “Then he would wander off and work on his own things, come back and check what I was doing. We just did that for hours.”
Four years later, in 2019, Kauppila relocated to Hong Kong. She often visited the city for art events and its easy access to nature, and found it more affordable than Singapore, which was where she had a gallery representing her. She told the gallerist: “What if I stay in Mui Wo [on Lantau Island] and just fly out to Singapore a couple times a month? It would actually be cheaper.”

Then Covid-19 hit. Galleries closed, exhibitions were cancelled and Kauppila took a role as head of an art department at a private school for three years. Just as she was getting back to painting full time, she sustained a severe spinal injury while paddling an outrigger canoe in 2025.
A massive wave herniated three discs in her cervical spine, leading to a loss of sensation in her right arm and alarming neurological symptoms. Following a successful seven-hour surgery, her recovery was swift, fuelled by a determination to return to her studio. Within a month, she was painting again.
This brush with physical vulnerability brought on a significant artistic evolution. Her recent work has moved beyond traditional silk and paper to incorporate found objects. Inspired by her time on the water with the South Lantau Paddle Club, she began collecting debris washed in by the tide.
“I started to think: could I combine this with what I do?” she explains.












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Drawing on her experience repairing fibreglass canoes and learning the meticulous art of mounting rice-paper paintings from master craftsman Jacky Tsang Chi-chung, she began fusing the two worlds.
She now mounts her delicate ink work directly onto fibreglass substrates and discarded canvas bags found on Hong Kong’s shores.
Her latest series, “Lap Sap: Tension and Transformation”, explores this encroachment of human life on the natural world. Lap sap means rubbish in Cantonese.
Her subjects – egrets, night herons, bulbuls – now perch on surfaces that recall abandoned village houses, complete with tiny window frames and glass patterns. As usual, each piece is titled with GPS coordinates, anchoring the work to specific locations: a storm-swept beach or a forgotten village.
For Kauppila, these works are a quiet argument for the value of the discarded. Edges are torn, surfaces are crumpled and the small square frames meant to contain the subjects are instead overtaken by vines and feathers.

When Kauppila was invited to join the Hong Kong Artists Association after a chance meeting with Lam, she was surprised. Attending the annual banquet, she found herself among ink masters with 40 years of experience. While she is the first American and the only non-ethnic-Chinese member, she views her inclusion through a purely artistic lens.
“For me, art takes precedence. It wasn’t about being the only Westerner there,” she says. “It was about adoration for the talent in the room. I think that’s something only artists understand. Our art is how we communicate. It’s who we are.
“In those moments, nationality and politics don’t matter. What we leave behind is a legacy of beauty.”


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Nissa Kauppila at her home studio in Mui Wo on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. The Vermont native, who recently became the first non-ethnic-Chinese practitioner accepted into the Hong Kong Artists Association, specialises in painting natural motifs on discarded materials. Photo: Nissa Kauppila

A mixed-media piece Nissa Kauppila made in 2025, painted on discarded materials found on the beach near her home on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. Photo: Nissa Kauppila

The view from Kauppila’s childhood home in the US state of Vermont. Photo: Nissa Kauppila

One of Kauppila’s earlier works in 2015, when she had first begun experimenting with traditional Chinese materials. Photo: Nissa Kauppila

Kauppila moved from mainland China to Hong Kong in part for easy access to nature. Photo: Nissa Kauppila

One of Kauppila’s pieces features a Mormon butterfly on discarded materials collected from Pui O Beach on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island. Photo: Nissa Kauppila

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Vermont native Nissa Kauppila talks about fusing Eastern and Western painting styles on discarded materials following her recent induction


Vermont native Nissa Kauppila talks about fusing Eastern and Western painting styles on discarded materials following her recent induction.


Chinese culture

Hong Kong

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Recycling and waste reduction

How US painter became Hong Kong Artists Association’s first non-Chinese member

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Vermont native Nissa Kauppila talks about fusing Eastern and Western painting styles on discarded materials following her recent induction

Vermont native Nissa Kauppila talks about fusing Eastern and Western painting styles on discarded materials following her recent induction