Painter, Amy Cheng’s current work has been inspired by six months spent in Brazil on a Fulbright Fellowship, where her senses were overtaken by the lush plant life that flourishes in its tropical clime. Chenge take natural forms and riffs on them, saturating the paintings with color, energy, pattern and light. The jewel-like quality, and shimmering details linkthe micro and the macro – mosaics, brocades and the cosmos combined. The complex layered space, concave and convex forms, decoration, transparency, and shape-shifting playfulness all conspire to seduce – the way nature seduces in order to propagate itself. Cheng paints about the irrepressible life force we encounter in nature where the physical, sensual, spiritual, cerebral, and erotic coexist in a nexus. The artist used to speculate that her love of pattern and repetition found its roots in my Asian sensibility. Now she believes that on a very basic level, the human and possibly all living organisms nervous system respond organically to pattern-making.
“Traditionally the Chinese have used nature in art, both still life and landscape, to refer to the recurring, ever-renewing cycles of the seasons. To them, nature seemed eternal. At the dawn of the 21st century we are less sanguine on this point. Within this historical context, I find a close and imaginative examination of nature, which necessarily leads to a renewed sense of reverence for its miraculous complexity, a humbling but inspiring pursuit.”
Amy Cheng, The Usual Commotion (detail), 2008. Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist.
About the artist
Amy Cheng was born in Taiwan, raised in Brazil, Oklahoma and Texas. She received a BFA degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA degree from Hunter College, City University of New York. She has installed a number of public art commissions including a mosaic column at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a painted ceramic mural at the Howard St. El Station in Chicago, IL and faceted glass windscreens at the Cleveland Street Subway Station in Brooklyn, New York. She has exhibited her paintings both nationally and internationally. In 2008 she received a Senior Lecture/Research Fulbright fellowship to Brazil. She has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts painting fellowships, and a travel grant to China from Arts International. She is a Professor in the Art Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Additional resources
- Flickr – Official website