Exhibition at Bannister Gallery
December 6, 2012 – December 28, 2012
Click here to view the artshow videos and download the digital catalog of this exhibit

"Yong Chen is exhibiting a new body of work that explores his immigrant experience in America. His paintings express, through skillful craftsmanship, compositions that evoke a sensitivity to a type of narrative portraiture. Its focus is on new life experiences in America. Chen expresses his voice through a hybridity of the two cultures he represents in his work. His highly detailed renderings of other immigrants have striking references to cultural experience steeped in Western art, yet contain Chinese art-making practice at its core..." Read more

reviews on MY new Picture book a gift: "Combined with his luscious watercolors, evokes a vivid portrait of rural Chinese culture. Children will find much to notice and discuss in the illustrations, both in the pictures of Amy's home ... and those of China. This is an uncomplicated introduc tion to the holiday and a lovely addition to most collections." — School Library Journal. Read more

Yong Chen is an artist deeply interested in art. He is a painter, teacher, illustrator ... Yong has been devoted himself to teach art since age of 13. Then he taught five year high school in China after he graduated from a teachers' college. After he immigrated to the United States, he finish BFA in Boston and completed his MFA in Illustration from the University of Hartford. Since 1995, he has been teaching studio art classes in many colleges, both 4-year and community colleges. Now, Yong Chen is an full-time professor devoting his full energy on teaching drawing and painting in both traditional classroom and online. His passion for distant education and mission to extend his teaching to the world was started from this website, YongChen.com. Since he designed his first Web site in 1994, Yong has been giving free online watercolor classes through his online learning center. With step-by-step demonstrations and videos, Yong Chen continuously shares his watercolor painting methods and techniques with you.

Through history and across the world, watercolor has been a very attractive painting medium to most artists. Yong Chen has been studied different mediums and forms of paintings, include traditional oriental Chinese brush painting, oil painting, acrylic, and watercolor painting. The subject matters in his paintings include people, cat, dog, bird (click to view and purchase his beautiful Bird Alphabets poster), butterfly, and flowers.

Besides teaching watercolor painting and illustration, Yong Chen is also a published illustrator of a few children's books. His children's books include picture book "Finding Joy" (Boyds Mills Press, a Highlights Company), picture book "Miz Fannie Mae's Fine New Easter Hat" (Little, Brown and Company), children's book "Starfish Summer" (HarperCollins Publishers), and "Swimming with Sharks" (HarperCollins Publishers) and his early watercolor illustrations for picture book "Maria's Loose Tooth". Yong is also the author as well illustrator of his latest picture book "A Gift" (Boyds Mills Press, a Highlights Company) which base on his own experience in two different cultures and his desire... learn more.