Fort Smith Regional Art Museum
Lin Chen Exhibit
Polly Crew Gallery
Lin Chen received her BFA from the University of Arkansas Fayetteville in 2004. Since then she has continued to work from her home studio, and to exhibit solo or with fellow artists. She’s currently an adjunct instructor of the Art Department at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith. She is also an artist in residence for the Arts in Education Program through the Arkansas Arts Council and the Center for Art & Education. The goal of the program is to research and improve inter-disciplinary learning and creative thinking through the study of art. Besides visiting all six elementary schools in Van Buren School District, Arkansas, Lin has also worked with other non-profit and community organizations on developing art programs based on their specific needs. Lin and her husband Ken Murray live on a small family farm in Charleston, Arkansas.
Artist's Statement
Since I began to paint in the late 1990s, I have followed the figurative tradition. I’m fascinated with nature as opposed to the purely conceptual or abstract ideas. Whether the subject is a still life, an interior, figure or landscape, my work is always collaboration with the things I observe. I find the objective world endless exciting because, unlike what I can dream up in my own head, it is always unpredictable due to the changing light and random interactions among the forms. For that reason I never run out of challenges or problems to solve.
Although the subjects of my work are traditional, my approach to form and space is essentially contemporary. When it comes to making things appear “real,” I let color do the job. Light, air, solid form, spaces, all are the works of color value and temperature. Like many contemporary artists, I’m not content with merely making things look “real,” I’m also keen on maintaining a balance, sometimes, tension, between the subjects rendered and the arrangements of design elements. If occasionally the quality of paint in my work overshadows, even negates the subject it depicts, it’s because paint is the most immediate and “real” thing I deal with directly. A painter ought to have the privilege to love his/her material more than his/her subject, at least, occasionally.
I would have given up painting long ago had my only objective been to copy and record nature. It is the transformative process of making perception visible that sustains me. By perception I mean not only what I see, but also how they appear to me as a painter and translator. My commitment is to the ever sharp, ever new, edge between the two realities.
Paintings for sale. For more info, please contact:
Fort Smith Art Center
423 N. 6th Street
Fort Smith, AR 72901
P: (479) 784.2787 • F: (479) 784.9071 • E: info@fortsmithartcenter.org
Lin Chen received her BFA from the University of Arkansas Fayetteville in 2004. Since then she has continued to work from her home studio, and to exhibit solo or with fellow artists. She’s currently an adjunct instructor of the Art Department at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith. She is also an artist in residence for the Arts in Education Program through the Arkansas Arts Council and the Center for Art & Education. The goal of the program is to research and improve inter-disciplinary learning and creative thinking through the study of art. Besides visiting all six elementary schools in Van Buren School District, Arkansas, Lin has also worked with other non-profit and community organizations on developing art programs based on their specific needs. Lin and her husband Ken Murray live on a small family farm in Charleston, Arkansas.
Artist's Statement
Since I began to paint in the late 1990s, I have followed the figurative tradition. I’m fascinated with nature as opposed to the purely conceptual or abstract ideas. Whether the subject is a still life, an interior, figure or landscape, my work is always collaboration with the things I observe. I find the objective world endless exciting because, unlike what I can dream up in my own head, it is always unpredictable due to the changing light and random interactions among the forms. For that reason I never run out of challenges or problems to solve.
Although the subjects of my work are traditional, my approach to form and space is essentially contemporary. When it comes to making things appear “real,” I let color do the job. Light, air, solid form, spaces, all are the works of color value and temperature. Like many contemporary artists, I’m not content with merely making things look “real,” I’m also keen on maintaining a balance, sometimes, tension, between the subjects rendered and the arrangements of design elements. If occasionally the quality of paint in my work overshadows, even negates the subject it depicts, it’s because paint is the most immediate and “real” thing I deal with directly. A painter ought to have the privilege to love his/her material more than his/her subject, at least, occasionally.
I would have given up painting long ago had my only objective been to copy and record nature. It is the transformative process of making perception visible that sustains me. By perception I mean not only what I see, but also how they appear to me as a painter and translator. My commitment is to the ever sharp, ever new, edge between the two realities.
Paintings for sale. For more info, please contact:
Fort Smith Art Center
423 N. 6th Street
Fort Smith, AR 72901
P: (479) 784.2787 • F: (479) 784.9071 • E: info@fortsmithartcenter.org
