I am a Chinese American artist working on a combination of portraiture and landscape that fuses imagery from both Eastern and Western cultures. As a first generation Asian American art student, I use traditional Chinese brush painting techniques in my artworks to reaffirm a connection to my roots. After moving to San Francisco at the age of four, I quickly adapted to the Americanized lifestyle. In my paintings, I juxtapose my ideals of traditional Chinese culture with my current exposure to the modernized technologies and infrastructures in America. I am fascinated by the imagery from both Eastern and Western cultures and I want my art to reflect my personal experience as a cross cultural American. My work mainly contains different architectural structures that are incorporated into unfamiliar ancient Chinese abstract-like landscapes. 

Shifting from my cultural roots, my most recent work focuses on my personal growth and self awareness during times when I feel alone and isolated. The three paintings in this series all depict times when I feel stuck in my own world -- either daydreaming or on my phone reminiscing about happier times. My idea is to capture an idealistic background that displays moments of safety where I can be vulnerable. During quarantine, I further explore the tension with oneself and with the world around me by focusing on the power struggle between human versus self. I learned to express my individuality through my difficult times by contrasting them to dreamlike environments that I imagined in my head. 

Carrie Liu (She, Her, Hers) | @liuu.art