Meet Sherry Chen | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sherry Chen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sherry, can you share a quote or affirmation with us?
My favorite quote is from Henri Matisse” Creativity takes courage:. It’s short and simple but to fully embrace it truly takes courage. Many years ago, I changed my painting style from colorful, passionate figurative to a more subdued minimal style still-life and abstract. The figurative paintings have been shown and sold well in many galleries across the states and also in exhibitions and collections internationally. Artistically I was comfortable and confident with the style I was painting for about 10 years and the thought of doing something else is really daunting to me. As Philip Guston writes in his “ I want to paint what I want to see”, “the last picture has become such a friend”. The paintings have become my friends and it’s hard to part away. But at the same time, emotionally and intellectually I was craving for something else, and longing to explore and find an outlet to record my emotional journey and my creativity. I was ready for a change. Encouraged by the Matisse quote, I started a new path that I felt is true to myself. However, fast forward to recent years since the pandemic, my thoughts and emotions have again influenced my painting, and this time I struggled less when I needed to find the language to explore and be in sync with my inner-self.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I was very introvert as a young child and drawing is something I love to do. Although my parents are both scientist, they encouraged this gift and found teachers for me at a young age. At 12 years old, I got into the attached high school of the famous Sichuan Fine Art Academy, since then I continued my art education in China and in U.S. Being an professional artist is not easy, balancing between the solitude of creating your art and the business of promoting your work seems opposite but unavoidable. I am most proud of is that my family is very supportive and that I enjoy living a creative life and can’t imaging otherwise.

The recent years have been immersed in anxiety and isolation due to the pandemic, the war, and economical uncertainty. The act of painting is like a salvation that helped me break the limitation of enclosed space and limited human interaction. My recent works are inspired by a series of dreams that multiple images are continuously intertwined. This dreaming like imagery combining with current reality are explored in my work to express the subconsciousness; bring the viewers into this visual journey with me. Technically, I am always fascinated by the paint’s materiality, the effect what shapes, colors and textures will do to our emotions. In my recent works, I incorporated rice paper into my painting. The fragile paper of eastern art material subconsciously represent my cultural heritage that added a layer of mysterious quality, like a veil in front of the reality, I try to focus on the immediate manifestations of these visual elements when they meet with the eye, and maybe the reason behind it.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The plan will depend on which friend is visiting. If it’s an artist friend, we may go to museums and galleries, or go out to do some sketching. In general, we would first go to a neighborhood breakfast place called Incredible Café for breakfast. We would order and share a sweet crepe with fresh fruit and cream with chocolate and sprinkled with sugar, another savory crepe of salmon, kimchi, spinach and mushroom. After that we could go to the botanic garden in Encinitas to walk around amidst many exotic plants. Then we could go to the nearby Moonlight State Beach to relax and talk. We will be hungry by then after walking and sun bathing. Not a problem, already made a reservation at a very popular Chinese restaurant called Ding Tai Fen located on La Jolla village drive inside the Westfield UTC, for some crab & Kurobuta pork xiao long bao, shrimp fried rice, wood ear mushroom, kale with garlic, and spicy wontons, add a icy Boba jasmine milk tea to fresh up. After lunch, we could drive to downtown Gaslamp quarter for some strolling, visiting galleries and antique shops. We could also swing by Pacific Beach to get a couple of best seafood tacos from Oscar, this hole in the wall Mexico restaurant on Turquoise St. After that, we can go to the 3.2-mile pacific beach boardwalk for some more walking and watching the sunset near the beach. It’s time to go home, and we could pick up some sushi and sashimi at Akai Hana Japanese restaurant on the way for a light late dinner.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
This summer I visited my teacher from graduate school, acclaimed artist and distinguished professor Emeritus Boyd Saunders in his home at Chapin South Carolina. I took many of Mr. Sunders’ printmaking specially lithograph classes while studying in the art department of University of South Carolina. As an international student from China with limited language skill, Mr. Saunders was very encouraging and helped me get familiar with the printmaking studio and mastering the printing process. His class critique at the end of each session also helped me to express my ideas and to understand other students’ works tremendously. He is a very outspoken and warm professor, once he invited the whole class to his beautiful Chapin home surrounded by dense woods. We all had a blast. At the time, U of SC had an exchange program with a Chinese university and Mr. Saunders asked me to be the translator for some Chinese artists and scholars. He is very much interested in exchanging ideas with people from different backgrounds and cultures. ” The View from South” , the narrative art of Boyd Saunders by Thomas Dewey II, published by The University of South Carolina Press is a great book chronological Mr. Saunders’ life and art with many color plates. Although his own art is mostly narrative and realistic, he encourages students to pursue their own ideas and styles. I started to experiment with abstract art in his class after years of realistic training in China. The openness in teaching was very mind opening for me at that time, it made me feel I can be myself and make art follow my own ideas and passions which helped me transitioning from an art student to an artist.

Website: sherryxchen.com

Instagram: xiaohongart

Linkedin: Sherry Chen