40” x 26”
Original Artwork
Mixed Media on Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper
Painting is a form of physical journaling. For Gina, her work bears witness to her story of being Chinese in America. Born in Taiwan, she arrived in the United States at age seven. She grew up in New Jersey then migrated west to attend Rice University in Houston Texas, where she earned a BA in Art & Art History as well as a Bachelor of Architecture degree. After college, she settled in southern California where she currently lives and works.
Gina’s professional career started in architecture. Soon thereafter, she became fully ensconced in the themed entertainment industry, running and managing theme park projects, here and abroad. However, her love for art and architecture never left her. She’s influenced by and admires American painter Neil Nagy, 20th-century Chinese artist Zhang Daqian and artist James Turrell’s works on light and space.
Her studio practice is a direct counterbalance to her work in managing projects where she can rely more upon instinct and the physicality of materials and less on strategic planning and verbal negotiations. She enters the solitariness of the studio to unearth the truths of her identity through visual explorations. Like Gina herself, her work is a blend of east and west, with expressionistic, often calligraphic brushstrokes meeting pure abstraction.
