My work is directly linked to the software and digital tools I use to create it. I gather visual source material—old family photographs, newspaper headlines, portraits of friends, images of paintings I don’t really like—and manipulate it on the computer to create a condensed, simplified, essential version. While keeping the entirety of the digital information intact, I create abstractions to force a new perspective on the familiar. The result is a series of formal images that are direct translations of the source data, with all the information presented in a new form. The removal of

The subjects in my work reflect my need to understand how nature works. In all senses of the word, I am a naturalist. But unlike an observer of the physical world alone, I also observe my own interior psychological world. The polarizing result is an undeniable truth: what should make sense in light of the facts that are presented is exactly what does not make sense. An artist innately thinks this way. In other words, the artist relies on instinct as the means of finding truth.

Born in China, I grew up in many different geographic regions and was surrounded by starkly contrasting natural environments. My inspiration is grounded in my memories of these landscapes. Studying in London, I became aware of the power of freedom and imagination in shaping my world. I began to connect my childhood fascination with natural environments to my artistic practice. My practice became a type of freedom, and through an exploration of freedom came a growing opportunity to express my point of view. During the past two years at RISD, I have had the chance to get

My paintings trick your eyes and guide your brain to somewhere else. What you see isn’t all you think, and what you think isn’t all you see. Through the humor and sarcasm of my subjects and techniques, ideas shift constantly between fantasy and reality. Inspired by mundane experiences, anthropomorphic ideas, aural and visual puns, and cultural issues, my paintings’ quirkiness and ambiguity intrigue viewers and lead them to linger and discuss; the work contains something personal, something universal, and something critical.

As a figurative narrative painter, I create images using Black people as subject matter in order to insert stories of Black Americans into the history of Western painting. I use familiar yet nontraditional surfaces and mediums for my work, including found objects, cardboard, signage, and drop cloths. These materials have been used in protest, and are taken from everyday life. As a Black male, I empathize with cardboard for being found everywhere, considered easily replaceable, being brown, and being layered. I want to contribute to diversity in the art market

My work brings to light the paradoxical state of women’s sexuality in a distinctly patriarchal society, literally and figuratively. Laced with bright lights and a near-hallucinatory fanfare of color, the immediate tenor of my most recent work is a carousel of revelry and excitement, similar to the buzzing allure of Vegas. This sparkling veneer is sarcastically subverted by the realities that are being addressed—objectification, commodification, and the disfigurement and misuse of women’s sexuality in society.

My work depicts spaces that prompt a psychological reading of objects and subject, enigmatic narratives, and island life. I focus on surfaces, using casts of daily objects and collage. These compositions create scenarios that associate painting with humor, responding to social behavior, psychological experience, and the economic phenomenon.

My body contradicts pop aesthetics of beauty. It is difficult for women such as myself, who oppose gender conformity, to exist. This is especially true when one’s own body refuses to conform— when the physicality of the body itself contradicts existing gender and sexual conventions.

This work is a meditation on the space of creative activity. The paintings are a product of many hours, days, weeks spent shuffling around the studio, building canvases, reading the newspaper, getting drunk, rearranging old pieces, pacing, staring at walls, drinking too much coffee, and eventually painting. I’m interested in how traces of previous artistic efforts can evolve into new generations of work and potentially distill some meaning or truth from a studio practice that looks increasingly inward.

The American Dream idealizes home ownership as an identifying component of ascent to the middle class. But the maxim “There’s no place like home” illuminates the importance of home not as a symbol but as a feeling. My caravans reflect the notion that wherever you travel or move to, there is the possibility of finding the safety and comfort of home. The anti-aesthetic, somewhat crude characteristics of my paintings reflect specific experiences and identities of my family, which transcend time and location. From Akron, Ohio, to Los Angeles, California, dead or alive, we