Nobody’s Child Series  

In China, I’m not Chinese; in the U.S., I’m not American.  I feel that I exist in the gap between both. Realizing this has been an education in itself.  As I began a series of self-portraits, doing a lot of introspective thinking, this awareness that I exist in a gap "in-between," became very apparent.  By way of these feelings and the weight they created, I began this series of “nobody’s child” paintings.  Through each painting, I carefully and intensely looked at myself, my past, my upbringing under the Mao period, how I lived then with my parents, my schooling, my college years as an art student, my becoming a single mom and leaving China, bringing my mom and dad to live with me in N.Y., and my present situation as a new citizen of the U.S. voting for the first time (and watching Trump win), my son Davey now sailing the oceans as a Navy petty officer, starting an MFA program at the age of 44, it’s all like I am watching a movie, winding and rewinding it over and over again, stopping it at moments that are foggy and clouded over, seeking clarity and lucidity, finding myself to be more critical and more contemplative as I sort through it all. Many times feeling that what I thought was positive in my past may have really been negative.  Each painting contains “me,” juxtaposed with the Chinese “things” that made up my life, symbolically presented as fragments of "ruin" and "reconstruction."