Chin Yuen: Wanderlust and Souvenirs

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Chin Yuen, "My Garden Paradise Trio," nd

Opening Night:  July 26, 6 – 8 PM

I have a permanent case of wanderlust.  By the age of 15, I had already lived in four countries.  Although home was a shifting concept, my love for drawing was a constant.  The exposure to diverse cultural aesthetics shaped my art education and creativity.  Naturally, I associate experiencing different cultures with growth.  As an adult, I continued to move to and work in different countries in order to expand my horizon.  It was just a matter of time that my migratory past and continuous travels organically influence my creativity.  

In 2017, I did an artist residency in Berlin, Germany. I photographed things that I encounter on my daily routine and incorporated them into my paintings, allowing them to evolve with different degrees of abstraction and interpretations.  The creative process emphasized and exaggerated the distance between memory and experience—likewise, between experience and artistic interpretation.  The end result was an installation of 25 small paintings called “Berlin Souvenirs.”  

My artistic journey continues in Victoria with the diverse resources I brought back from Berlin and other destinations.  I collage with the fabric of a shirt I bought in Australia, or the photo image of art deco tiles from a theatre in Berlin.  This process allows me to relive my travels and give new meanings to these objects in my creations.  The resulting paintings are richly textured in layered experiences.  They are unique mementos and natural testaments of an artist with a penchant for wanderlust. - Chin Yuen

Artist Bio:

International award-winning Canadian painter, Chin Yuen, was born in Malaysia.  She studied in Singapore and England before moving to Canada for farther education. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honors from Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art and Design and a Master of Arts from the University of Victoria, Canada.  After graduation, she moved to Japan and Italy, where she taught English and Fine Arts for several years before returning home to Canada.  Yuen continues to travel extensively for work and pleasure.  She sees her diverse cultural exposures as an artistic asset and finds inspiration everywhere, from pop-culture to decaying wood.  For over 20 years, she has exhibited internationally. Her dynamic abstract paintings are on the covers of international textbooks and the walls of residential homes, hotels, health care centres, and corporate buildings.