Randy Lu was exposed to art at a young age. Visiting permanent
museum collections and special exhibits were treasured family outings. She has visited many fine art collections in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and developed a preference for Western
Impressionistic and Far Eastern painting.
She had her first art class when she was six years-old. She still
remembers the classroom decorated with paper mache figures, glue, and torn paper. In middle school, she was fascinated by macrame. Her favorite piece was a large, 3D hanging with
intricate designs woven through large plastic hoops. In high school, India ink and woodblock printing took over. She then turned to charcoal and pencil and dabbled in soft pastels
before finding her niche in oil pastels and watercolor.
Her experiences while living overseas in Western Europe and East Asia
prior to becoming a professional artist have had a profound influence on her thought and approach to art. Since she began working with non-toxic oil pastels and watercolor many years later,
she prefers to focus on several flowers in a bush and not the entire bush or a few leaves on a hedge.
Though she has used actual objects as models for still life paintings, her
travels in the U.S. and abroad have inspired many of her landscape and animal paintings. She is fond of lush landscapes, ragged mountains, oddly shaped rock formations, and animals with
character.
She likes to experiment with different oil pastel and watercolor
techniques. In watercolor, she sometimes paints similar scenes from different angles or using different brush strokes or various amounts of water in wet on wet paintings. In February,
2018, she began to use bolder color combinations for more dramatic and dynamic landscapes many of which were inspired by her visits to some national parks last year. In 2019, she explored
the relationship between shapes within objects in paintings focusing on the natural scenery of Iceland and the United Kingdom.
She established her company, Randy Lu Pastels And Watercolor with the goal
of offering high quality giftware with dynamic and bold images that make the every day feel special.