Ethan Tse

“Painting is how I stay honest with myself — it’s where I turn memories of the sea and my inner world into calm spaces you can live with every day.”

Born in 1981 in the coastal city, Ethan Tse grew up with wet sand under his feet, waves erasing footprints, and seabirds circling overhead. With family members who painted, sketchbooks and oil colors were always around him, quietly shaping his imagination.

He did not begin as a full-time artist. As a teenager, he took a stable, well-paid job in a different field. At eighteen, however, he realised that the life he truly wanted was in front of a canvas, not behind a desk. Influenced by his family and his seaside childhood, he made a decisive choice: he walked away from that comfortable job and started again from zero as an oil painter.

For more than twenty years since, Ethan has focused on calm, contemporary abstract painting. He is best known for:

• Wabi-Sabi / Japandi inspired neutrals with soft textures and gentle imperfections,
• minimal abstract compositions in sand tones, grey-blues and warm whites for modern interiors,
• sea-inspired abstract landscapes that quietly echo horizons, tides and distant light.

Working slowly in layers, he builds quiet horizons, soft textures and subtle shifts of colour that feel more like a mood than a literal scene. His paintings don’t try to describe a specific place; instead, they offer a small pocket of stillness in busy lives — a calm surface where viewers can slow down and find their own memories inside the colours.