Sharon Liú - Mom Artist 

I started learning art at a very young age. It almost feels like another life when I look back to those years of professional training at one of the best art schools in China. I often tell people that growing up, I was well trained as a painter, but never trained as an artist. Most of my sense of art came from life itself, but because of my education as a transitional oil painter, my approach to canvas was always focused on the likeness to real life rather than expression. It is new to me—almost unimaginable—to try to speak for myself through art.

 

Almost 14 years ago, I “quit” being an artist and started working. I didn’t hate it; my job was stable, and it provided me all I needed during a time when I lived independently in Shanghai. It was actually pretty awesome. But when I moved to the States and had my firstborn daughter, things started to change. I started to face the reality of life; I was a single mother of a Nigerian and Chinese mixed-race child. Given the demographics and social realities of China, I was not willing to try raising her back home.