Meet Sherry Chen

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sherry Chen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sherry, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I was very introverted as a young child. Drawing and painting is something I’ve always had a passion for. Although both of my parents are scientists, they encouraged this interest and found teachers for me to work with from a young age. At 12 years old, I got into the attached high school of the renowned Sichuan Fine Arts Academy. Since then, I’ve continued my art education through college and graduate school in China and the U.S. Being an professional artist is not easy, balancing between the solitude and the joy of creating your work, and the business side of promoting the work seems contradicting but unavoidable. I am very fortune that my family has always been very supportive since the beginning and that I enjoy living a life where I’m able to pursue something I love and get to work with other creatives.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

In recent years, I have been working on family archival projects. Documenting my parents’ house, my mother’s old handmade fabrics lying around. I took photos, videos. I hope to create paintings to preserve and extend her creativity. During the documentation, I also found some of my father’s calligraphy along with his collection of calligraphy papers, ink and brushes etc. My dad passed away four years ago and about the same time subconsciously, I started incorporate Chinese rice paper into my painting and now I have the rice paper my dad used. This made the whole process more intimate and personal to me. The rice paper’s duality of being fragile and strong echoes my emotional state traveling back and forth between the U.S. and China. The flexibility of the paper blended well with the canvas and oil paint. I layered the paper with my painted surface as memories of the past are merging with the present.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Looking back on my artistic journey, I feel the qualities, skills and mental awareness that have helped me are first the honesty toward yourself, then the courage to explore and experiment, the last is being open mined in many different aspect of your life.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I am always interested to collaborate with other artists, art galleries or institutions. I think collaboration will enrich and inspire any artist. I also have many skills and talents I feel that are unrealized. Doing projects with others will challenge me as an artist. I am willing to learn and experience with my collaborator the joy of shared interests and realize ideas that can be better achieved by the collaboration. The ideal partner or collaborator is someone who has the same aesthetic value, who is open to explore cultural differences.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sherryxchen.com
• Instagram: studiosxc

Image Credits

Ana Chen