There is a certain kind of attention that can change the air in a room. Stagnant oxygen becomes charged through the simple act of looking, of noticing, of deciding to stay present long enough for another person to come into focus.

To spend time with artist and designer Tim Nguyen is to understand that being seen is not always passive. Sometimes it is an exchange. Sometimes it is a stranger at a bar holding still just long enough to become a drawing. If you’re lucky, it is a friend whose face carries every version of the person they have been, or a body, in motion or at rest, revealing more than language can hold.

Nguyen’s work returns again and again to the figure. His drawings move quickly, but they do not feel rushed. His lines are fluid, tender, and alert, less interested in perfecting a person than in catching the charge of their presence. In his work, time gathers. A portrait becomes a record of a moment, a relationship, a glance, a place, or the person he was when he made it.

"I pay a lot of attention to every person I come across, and every space I go in," Nguyen says. That attention is the beginning of the work.

BREDA spent time with Tim. We suggest you do too.

You wrote about standing on a roof in Los Angeles with a friend, overlooking a city you both once dreamed about, and feeling like you belong. What does it mean to be drawn to a place before you fully understand why?

"Los Angeles was the first big city I heard about growing up," Nguyen says. "The lore and history of this place have always piqued my interest, but I remember being so enamored the first time I visited on a school trip."

The city first arrived as imagination, then as atmosphere. "There were more sights, sounds, and smells that energized my spirit far beyond the suburb I grew up in," he says. "I wanted to get closer to the core of myself, and I just felt in my bones this was the place to do that."

By high school he was already making plans to study, live, and work there, a city where he could "carve my own path, but still find my way home and spend time with family."

Do you think LA made you softer, freer, more honest, or did it simply give you enough room to become what you already were?

"LA has definitely made me more honest with myself in what I want to make of my life," he says. "It's made me more resilient in what I am capable of creating, and freer in how I present myself to the world."

Nguyen speaks about Los Angeles the way he speaks about drawing. As a site of encounter. The city becomes part of the exchange.

His drawings feel like that. They are not static, even when the figure is still. A shoulder turns. A hand leads the eye. A face seems caught between thought and response. They give the sense that the subject was not posed into being, but briefly met.

When you're drawing someone you know deeply, are you drawing what's in front of you, or are you also drawing all the versions of them you've carried over time?

"This question is making me emotional," Nguyen says. "To answer briefly, I am drawing the version of them that is present in front of me. I want to capture their likeness in that exact moment, their facial expression, their body language, a new hairstyle perhaps."

But with familiarity, the present is never only the present. "It's in the moments I'm observing them where all the thoughts of our relationship start to flood my brain, and find familiar lines in which I have drawn before," he says. "There's nothing more gratifying and more special than drawing a face or figure I am already familiar with. Each line feels a little more tender."

Your birthday message to your mom is funny and tender and chaotic in a way that feels very real. How does your family show up in your work, even when they're not literally the subject?

"Nothing is more raw than my relationship with my family, especially with my parents," Nguyen says. "I often find it's the little stories in between the everyday activities that are the most profound."

His family communicates candidly, he says, sometimes abrasively, but always openly. "No subject is ever off limits. Life just is. There's no sense in beating around the bush. I've learned if you just say what you mean, you can find humor and sweetness in honesty."

You come from design and fashion, where the body is always present, but often through clothing, silhouette, image, and styling. When did the figure itself become the thing you wanted to look at more directly?

"The figure has always been an integral point of focus in my work, be it fashion or art," Nguyen says. "I always designed a garment with the intention to highlight the body, and it brings me a lot of joy to see how clothes can transform the spirit."

But when his career shifted from fashion design to art, the body became less of an outline and more of an emotional subject. "I was navigating difficult situations in my personal life that made me look closer at the image of a body," he says. "I was teased a lot growing up for being too weak, an ex-partner ended our relationship because they were no longer physically attracted to me, and I spent eight months caring for my brother during an intense medical journey, until the end of his life."

All of this changed the way he looked. Rather than looking away from the body, he looked deeper into it. "All of these experiences made me look at the body in an honest way: the strength, the fragility, and the magnificent beauty of what our bodies are capable of in any state of being," he says. "Storytelling starts with our bodies."

That sentence lingers because it names what his work understands. Before a person explains themselves, the body has already begun. It carries fatigue, confidence, self-protection, grief, humor, style, memory. It enters a room before biography can catch up. Nguyen's drawings pay attention to that first, universal language.

What did fashion teach you about people that still shows up in your drawings?

"Movement, narrative, and personality," Nguyen says. "Whenever I come across someone of interest, my mind starts taking notes and asking questions. I want to know where their pieces are from. I notice how they move and speak, analyzing with curiosity."

Fashion taught him how to read the body in context: what someone chooses, how they carry it, how they inhabit a look, how style can reveal a mood before a word is spoken. "I build a drawing in the same way," he says. "I have to process my feelings about a subject through technical and intuitive lines."

That balance between feeling and structure is everywhere in his work. "Oftentimes, the most inspiring people and moments pass by in a flash, and I want to capture that fleeting feeling in stillness," he says. "My figure studies and paintings are simple and fluid, but I'm always surprised when people linger on a piece. Their eyes follow where the lines go, making up stories about the figure before them, and who they must be."

Is there anything from that fashion world that you had to unlearn in order to make the work you make now?

"I had to unlearn how to be so precise," he says. "In fashion design, I have to account for every detail in order to make a garment work. All those pieces fit together like a puzzle, and it has to be perfect."

Drawing offered another kind of discipline, one that made room for looseness. "Making the pivot to art allowed me to have a more relaxed approach to creating something," he says. "There are elements of precision, but they are executed in a much more honest and liberating way. I can create two, or 2,000, of the same dress, but no two drawings will ever be the same. And that's really special to me."

Your drawings have style, but they don't feel styled to death. How do you know when a drawing still feels alive?

"Okay, I'm very flattered, wow, thank you for that observation," Nguyen replies. "I tend to work very fast. I am thinking but also not thinking at the same time. I'm processing a lot of information at once, but I let my feelings truly indicate where the lines go, and I'm actively editing as I'm drawing."

For Nguyen, the life of a drawing is protected by restraint. "The moment a piece feels overworked is when it starts to lose its energy," he says. "I think my pieces feel alive and vibrate because I usually know when to stop."

I might be projecting because I’m a figurative artist myself, but I feel like artists who focus on portraits and the figure have to love people in a very specific way. Do you feel that way?

"I. Love. People," he says. "From people I have a deep relationship with to complete strangers, I just adore everyone I meet. We're all human, we all have stories both profound and silly, and we're all just trying to live our best lives. It's such a joy and honor to draw someone, to capture their essence on paper."

The drawing of the twin sisters at Gyoza Bar is such a beautiful example of what your work can hold in just a few minutes. They're hugging, smiling, and loving each other. How do you stay present enough to catch that without overthinking it?

"Choosing to be present in this world of distractions is a muscle I am trying to exercise daily," Nguyen says.

He had walked into Gyoza Bar for a quick meal after a long day of work. The restaurant is intimate, with the bar facing the kitchen, the kind of space where overheard conversations do not feel entirely separate from your own. Nguyen began making small talk, listening to the people around him, and noticed two sisters celebrating.

"I overheard and raised my glass to cheers," he says. "And before I knew it, they were telling me how they lived in different cities, and this is the first time they've seen each other in months."

They talked about living in LA, missing someone who lives far away, and the feeling of reconnecting. Nguyen had his iPad with him and asked if they would like a quick drawing. He expected them to sit side by side and smile.

"But instead they grabbed each other, held onto each other, and one started crying, 'I just love my sister so much,'" he says. "It makes me think of my relationships with my own siblings, with friends I care about. In that moment, there is no choice but to be present."

The drawing became less about depiction than participation. "I am actively connecting with them and our energies are swirling," he says. "It's in that time that I need to work with haste in order to capture those feelings as purely as possible."

Do people ever reveal more than they realize when they sit for you?

"I've found it only takes a few lines to completely change the mood of a drawing," Nguyen says. "And in doing so, I am able to emphasize a part of the subject that feels the most prominent."

At first, his brain is trying to get everything in place. Then something shifts. "There's always a moment where I make marks that capture their likeness and it really gives me life," he says. "I'm always a little anxious and excited to show my subject the drawing, and oftentimes it takes them a minute to take it all in."

Their responses stay with him:
"Is that how you see me?"
"Is that how I look?"
"You made me look so beautiful."
To which Nguyen responds, "You are that beautiful."

That may be the simplest way to understand the stakes of his practice. To be drawn is to encounter another person's vision of you. It can feel exposing. It can feel affirming. It can feel like someone has found, in a few lines, a version of yourself you did not know was visible.

You do a lot of live drawing at brand events and public gatherings. What's the energy like when people realize they might be drawn? I’m one to freeze when I see a camera. Have you noticed patterns in how people behave when they sit for you? 

"This has been a new venture in drawing that I've developed in the last two years and I love it so much," he says. "I love drawing people without their knowledge, and I always fight with myself if I should show them or not."

Most people, he says, are appreciative and flattered to be drawn from a distance or stopped for a quick moment. Still, it requires nerve to begin. "It takes a bit of courage on my end to break the ice, especially in a city like LA where everyone sort of has their guard up," he says. "But once one person lets me in, the interest and line start to form pretty quickly."

Then the room changes. "Drawing people at events really does feel like a movie scene," he says. "Everything kind of slows down and gets quiet while the drawing is happening. Most people tend to pose looking directly at me. This eye contact with a complete stranger is incredibly intimate, and human."

After the nervousness comes trust. "After a few shared nervous giggles, we can both lock in, trust, and hopefully end up with a sweet drawing," he says. "Hugs and Instagram handles are usually exchanged, and I also love seeing how people leave with the drawing. Some are drunk and fold it, some roll it up, and some hold it with both hands like a precious treasure."

You seem to draw people at these moments when they are in between things: arriving, leaving, or celebrating. Are you drawn to people in transition?

"I love being able to capture motion in stillness," Nguyen says. "Everyone is everywhere all the time, be it physically, mentally, emotionally. We're all thinking and doing a million things at once."

A drawing interrupts that rush. Not abruptly, but subtly. It asks for a minute. It asks the subject to sit, or stand, or look back. "It's nice to slow down and capture a moment through a drawing, because drawings take time too," he says. "No matter how fast I draw, I'll never be as fast as a click of a camera, but that's what makes it so special. It's definitely a superpower. I love being able to stop time and capture it in the way that I do."

Maybe that is why his drawings feel less like images of people than evidence of time spent with them. Five minutes is still time. A few lines are still attention. A person who is studied, even briefly, is no longer anonymous in the same way.   

When you look at your work now, do you see a record of other people's lives, or do you see a record of your own?

"I definitely see a record of my own life," Nguyen says. "So much of my work comes from personal experiences. Seeing any of my pieces immediately takes me back to the time, place of who I was then, what I was doing, who was there, and where we all are now."

The drawing holds the subject, but it also holds Nguyen. His life is there in the line, in the setting, in the memory of making it. "The narrative ebbs from the past and flows into the present, with an open window to what might be on the horizon," he says. "These thoughts are fast and sweet, and I wonder where those drawings live, or what those people in my drawings are up to. Then, onto the next."

What has drawing people taught you about being a person?

"That we are all just doing our best," Nguyen says, "and most of the time, we're doing better than we give ourselves credit for. That no matter where you came from, and where you're trying to go, you are where you're meant to be in this exact moment. Let that be enough, and onward we go."