From Aisles to Easels: The Alchemy of Surrender
Ycoy Sitchon’s artistic homecoming is a healing journey where she learned to surrender control and let go of the requirement for the flawless.
Words Gerie Marie Consolacion
Photo courtesy of Ycoy Sitchon and Mico Gonzales
October 28, 2025
Ycoy Sitchon’s story is a profound narrative of creative surrender, a heartfelt homecoming to a self that had always existed, quietly waiting beneath layers of achievement and expectation.
Her journey is marked by an unwavering commitment to beauty and emotion, tracing a path from the exacting demands of economics and corporate life to the expansive freedom of the canvas.
Photo courtesy Ms. Ycoy Sitchon and Mico Gonzales
Drawing on every facet of her experience, during the exclusive interview with Art+ Magazine she reveals that life, much like art, “is unpredictable, imperfect, yet profoundly beautiful when seen as a whole.”
Sitchon's work is not merely visual; it is an intimate conversation, a language of love expressed through texture, flow, and the quiet truth of her soul.
Photo courtesy Ms. Ycoy Sitchon and Mico Gonzales
The Gentle Roots
The bedrock of Sitchon’s visual language was laid not in ambition, but in the vibrant sanctuary of her childhood.
“Beauty has always been a quiet companion in my life,” she reflects, noting how she was naturally drawn to beauty in small things—the flow of a Sunday dress or the way light filtered through church pews.
The most profound classroom, however, was her grandmother’s garden. This haven of Casablanca lilies, orchids, roses, and zinnias was a “world of color, scent, and quiet wonder,”
Here, Sitchon learned her first essential lesson: “Beauty can be gentle yet enduring. It grows even in uncertain conditions and often in silence,” a philosophy that guides her creations today.
Artist Ycoy Sitchon’s To Embosom The Colors Of All My Seasons
She spent hours gathering petals and leaves, crushing them into pigments for “paints” for make-believe recipes and little artworks, instinctively seeking expression.
In that garden, she discovered the “art of seeing,” recognizing how colors effortlessly blend and how light breathes life into form. This sacred space shaped her perception of texture, harmony, and story.
Artist Ycoy Sitchon’s To Harness The Zephyrs That Bear My Virtues
While her childhood revolved around expectations, grades, and competitions, art was her secret escape, “my way of breathing amid the pressure to perform.”
This quiet inner world was affirmed in grade school when she won second place in an art competition, feeling “seen for something that came from my soul, not from a report card.”
To this day, flowers remain her language: “They are vessels of memory, emotion, and quiet imagination,” she shares. In many ways, she reveals, “I am still that little girl, gathering petals and stories, turning them into something beautiful.”
The Healing Embrace
Sitchon spent her early years adhering to a life of precision and order, measuring success through milestones and numbers. Yet, she was not a creature of habit; “Monotony bores me,” she admits, feeling a persistent, quiet pull to seek missing pieces of herself. This profound longing fueled her creative reinvention.
The shift was gradual, moving from finance to event planning—a field that became her “bridge between structure and imagination.” While curating grand celebrations allowed her to design experiences that stirred emotions, painting entered her life quietly and unexpectedly, becoming the truest form of expression she had ever known.
It was here that she found deep solace: “It healed parts of me I didn’t realize were wounded and gave voice to emotions I could never articulate.”.
Artist Ycoy Sitchon’s To Honor The Quiet Grace of My Fluidity
When she steps into her studio, she transforms. The meticulous planner falls away, and the space becomes her sanctuary of release and quiet. “It feels like coming home to myself,” she shares. She describes the process as an expression, but more importantly, as a healing experience, allowing her to “surrender and to embrace imperfection, emotion, and truth.”
She intentionally resists superficial aesthetics, asserting, “To be candid, I’ve never been drawn to creating something that’s only pretty. Beauty alone feels hollow if it doesn’t carry emotion or meaning.”
Her work must be rooted in honesty and truth. For years, she quietly posted her paintings on a secret Instagram account, @ycspression, clarifying her mission: the name stood for “ycs” (ycoy) and “expression,” reflecting her intention “not to impress, but to express.”
The Language of Intimacy and Flow
In Sitchon’s world, whether through a lavish fête or a solitary canvas, “the goal is the same: to move hearts.” Emotions are the absolute center of her creative pursuits. In the studio, the brush becomes an extension of her feelings.
“I let the emotions lead,” she states, allowing the movement of her strokes to mirror the current state of her heart, whether it is “calm, sometimes it’s love, sometimes it’s longing.” This intimacy is precisely what she aims to capture: the feeling of connection and presence. She believes that the beauty of her art is that it doesn’t need to be perfect; “it only needed to be real.”
Artist Ycoy Sitchon’s To Push The Boundaries Teetering On the Precipice
Her art is characterized by layers, texture, and movement. She uses subtle curves and swirling textures to represent movement, acknowledging that “life, like art, is never still. Everything shifts, everything flows.” This tactile approach is deeply intuitive. She builds layers of acrylics, molding paste, and imported clays, often using unconventional tools to create depth. Though the elements may seem “topsy-turvy and cumbersome,” when viewed as a whole, a singular feeling persists: calm.
Texture, for Sitchon, is essential; it is “how I bring emotion to the surface.” She views it as “a language of emotion” that invites the viewer to go “beyond simply seeing and start feeling.” She is unafraid of roughness or uneven edges, maintaining that “the imperfections left behind by the process are what make the work feel honest,” and that “beauty doesn’t always have to be smooth. It can be raw, layered, and real.”
The Coexistence of Two Selves
Artist Ycoy Sitchon’s To Silence the Fear of the Uncharted
Sitchon recognizes that the discipline cultivated in her past life remains an indelible part of her artistry. Event planning trained her eye to see balance, texture, and rhythm, sensitivities that naturally inform her composition on the canvas. As a planner, she loved structure and order, while as an artist, she maintains a meticulous standard for craftsmanship, being very particular about the quality of materials, the durability of each layer, and how the piece will “age over time.”
However, the studio is where the strict rules dissolve, and the "planner self" softens. Painting is her deliberate release from structure, a space where she surrenders control and simply follows what feels right.
She ultimately embraces the harmony of these dual identities: “So maybe I haven’t shed that identity completely,” she reflects. “I’ve just learned how to let both sides coexist: the planner who loves harmony and the artist who embraces spontaneity and flow. Together, they create something that feels honest and whole.”
The Eternity of Feeling
Sitchon’s purpose is to instill enduring emotion, understanding that even fleeting celebrations leave behind "invisible marks on people’s hearts.” That impermanence is part of the magic. A painting, conversely, is lasting, yet it continues to “breathe and evolve,” allowing the viewer to return and feel something new each time.
Artist Ycoy Sitchon’s To Trust in all that I am Becoming
She views art as a deep, intimate exchange: “It’s a quiet conversation between the soul of the artist and the soul of the one who beholds it.”
Ultimately, she concludes that regardless of the medium, a grand celebration or a solitary canvas, “what endures is the feeling.”
Her deepest hope for her creations is “to move, to awaken, and to remind us that beauty, even when transient, can be deeply eternal.”
In every delicate movement of paint, she offers a gentle reminder of “beauty, love, and wonder that exists in everyday life.”
