Eastport Gallery is pleased to continue spotlighting our members, exploring their backgrounds, influences and favorite experiences.
Alice Chen is a self-taught artist who was born in Taiwan. She learned Chinese brush painting and Western watercolor painting as a child in school. She now paints on Moose Island in Maine.
Alice took part in weekly life drawing sessions at Eastport Arts Center for many years, and in 2009 sold her first acrylic painting at the Paint Eastport Day auction there. Soon she began painting almost daily, and joined Eastport Gallery in 2013. In 2016, she was invited alongside five other prominent area artists to participate in an experimental concert with singer Lydia McClain and pianist Sara Chisea. Called “Musemorphosis, the program combined poetry, songs and visual art on the Arts Center's main stage, with accompanying exhibition.
Alice loves to experiment with new styles, techniques and subjects. Her works often explore the boundaries between the abstract and the real, East and West, with elements of traditional Chinese brush painting and European impressionism. She focuses on colors, textures, and brush and palette knife energy. Her works often begin with a concrete subject, but quickly become explorations of emotional colors and abstract themes. Her work is constantly evolving and she is always dreaming of new ways to push the limits of expression for her experiences with nature and her own imagination. She is a popular artist in Eastport and there are a number of collectors who own several pieces signed A. Chen.
Her approach to each piece of art begins with questions. She appreciates starting with inputs from master artists or from nature and says, “It is the process that I enjoy. I explore and I experiment like a scientist.”
Alice does use some brush work but challenges herself to primarily paint with a palette knife. It allows her to step away a bit from the realistic details and focus on the abstract forms and colors.
You can see more of Alice’s work at eastportgallery.com/alice-chen.
