Enya Pan, a junior at DVHS, is an up-and-coming artist who’s overcome adversity to become an accomplished and developed artist.

Pan describes her style as “very simple line strokes in ink pen,” which had been heavily influenced by her experience being cyberbullied through her art account on Instagram several years ago.

In eighth grade, she created  an account and gained over one thousand followers, posting many of the portraits she made for her friends on their birthdays and other colored pencil art.

One time, she found a portrait she’d drawn in the trash.

“I was so hurt, like ‘I’m never doing this again,’” she said. Soon after, people perusing through her account began sending her direct Instagram messages, calling her art immature.

“Now that account doesn’t exist. I deleted it. That’s when my style really changed, because people complained about me [by] saying, ‘You know you kinda draw like a six year old child.’ That really affected my style, and after that I went through a phase where everything I made was black and white. It also affects how I see my art, and I don’t really like displaying my art anymore because of that. Even with my friends, I’m kinda afraid of their judgment,” she said.

Now, she adds some color and is becoming more comfortable with displaying her pieces. She began working on art seriously the year before the incident. After visiting four art studios, Pan finally found the one that fit her style and goals and continues to work there today.

She says that she particularly likes it because “the focus is more on meaning rather than on aesthetic or prettiness, or what society wants. The pieces that I make aren’t usually very colorful or very complicated, and some of them are just very simplistic, but they still convey more meaning than stereotypical works.”

Although she started with mostly colored pencil and markers, Pan has been experimenting with a lot of different mediums, including wire and paint clumps.

“What makes it fun is you get to explore so many different possibilities. You have so many different mediums you can use, and so many different ways of expressing what you want to express. For me, that’s changed a lot since I was nine as compared to now. It’s kind of interesting to watch myself grow,” she said.

After completing AP Studio Art Drawing her sophomore year, Enya Pan is now enrolled currently in the AP Studio Art Design class, after completing AP Studio Art Drawing in her sophomore year. She says the class, and her teacher, Ms. Kelsey Wengel, have been amazing and incredibly supportive of her work. Currently, they’re working on a “breath piece” that involves drawing bones, and you can usually see their finished work displayed in the office.