My art now is swinging in between the seen and unseen worlds: the seen world of objects, and the unseen world of energies.
While growing up in Taiwan, I had the opportunity to study traditional Chinese brush painting and calligraphy with several accomplished masters. And ever since, I have incorporated that training into my experiments with modern materials and idioms.
I’ve always been intrigued by form, pattern and colors. My interest may have started when I was four years old. I remember seeing the floating, shining dust particles reflecting the sunlight in the stale attic air of my family’s old house. The magic quality of nowness left an unspeakable feeling in my mind. And I remembered the fantastic colorful sky just before the typhoon – the powerful tropical storm – hit the little island. The translucent palace full of retinues and chariots, warriors and ministers, men and women were all in the castle of clouds.
As the youngest of the family, I often hid in that small attic to practice calligraphy (following my father’s calligraphic work), dreaming, and falling asleep by myself, until my mother searched everywhere and found me. I always love calligraphy, the timeless beauty of black and white simplicity.
Growing up in Taiwan, life as a female artist was not totally easy. I had to fight to find my own independence. And moved to New York was another challenging path. Besides art making, in the past I have done various jobs as a teacher, photojournalist, lived and practiced in a Zen monastery in Taiwan; in the City worked as a interpreter and translator, fashion textile designer… All and all, I’ve found people’s lives and struggle touch me deeply. All joy and pain get distilled, become my inner voice of abstraction.
Chinese is mainly a pictorial language of Yin and Yang principle. Each symbol has its vibrant life. When executing the brush strokes, I am particularly mindful and aware of the space in between. The empty space becomes a crucial component of the painting itself. The work is alive within the space and energy of those marks and colors, imbued with the spirit of the artist. Rather than building up like a textural oil painting, I use surfaces that soak in—canvases prepared with grounds that behave like traditional rice paper, pulling the paint in. Thus the space is infinite.
I want to create artwork that is primordial, ancient, and modern. Something like earth, like water, like air and all the elements. The materials are used to reflect the feelings and perceptions I have experienced in life – the ever changing, flowing moments of this chaotic yet harmonious existence; the cosmic, playful music that never ends.