ARTIST STATEMENT
 

My artwork often combines storytelling with nostalgia. I interpret life through my cultural background, lived experiences and beliefs.  As a first generation Chinese Canadian, I am given the privilege of understanding and representing Asian culture.  It is the culture of my parents, associated with my ethnicity, that I wish to understand beyond a superficial level.  Ordinary scenes from everyday life serve as access points for understanding a culture, such as women preparing food, men sitting in the town square, and a child feeding pigeons.  I value authenticity and human connection.

 

I choose traditional media such as watercolour, pencil and paper because of their direct simplicity.  My source imagery is usually photographs, from which I make a sketch, then an underpainting.  Building up layers of watercolour and graphite is a meditative process, starting out in uncertainty and gaining more and more clarity, like the process of recalling a memory.  I value the act of labour in art.  Being able to physically manipulate the canvas by sketching, erasing, cutting and pasting in real time is a concrete way for me to process the world as an artist, to offer my artistic self to society and connects me to the rich heritage of artists before me.