Mimi Chen Ting

Biography

Mimi Chen Ting is a painter, printmaker and performance artist. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States and abroad, including the Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the San Jose Museum of Art in San Jose California; the Millicent Rogers Museum, and The Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico; the Colorado Museum of Contemporary Art in Fort Collins; the Schneider Museum of Art of Southern Oregon University in Ashland; Art in General in New York City; the Lowe Art Museum of the University of Miami in Florida; the American Embassy in Malaysia; Art Forum Gallery in Singapore; Manukau City Gallery in New Zealand. In addition, her paintings are in numerous public, corporate, and private collections including those of AT & T, Advance Micro Device, Xerox Corporation, Kaiser Permanente, the University of Phoenix, Stanford University Hospital, and the Harwood Museum.

Artist Statement

When I enter the studio, I am like an irrepressible child, capable of boundless possibilities. I thrill at the process of making marks and relish the meandering my medium proffers. My path is smoothest when I am willing to fall. On this solitary journey, I simply cannot become lost. Every turn promises an adventure, and each step brings me closer toward home.

Review highlights:

“Exquisitely delicate and sensitive landscapes and abstractions involving sinuous outlines, pastel colors and silvery halos,....her work reflects a nicely poetic and personal sensibility.”
                                                                    Thomas Albright, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 21, 1970

“An apparition from the collective unconscious......Ting's paintings are abstract and contemporary; ......they invoke a characteristically Oriental approach to space.”                                                                                                                                                    Salli Robertson, Artweek, May 21, 1977

"Symbolic and romantic renderings, color drenched abstractions....."
                                                                     Dorothy Burkhart, San Jose Mercury News, Apr. 4, 1986

"A special brilliance, luminosity, velvety matt texture, and magical presence.....light travels as a live wire to modulate color changes in the smoothed spatial territory of (Ting's) two abstract pastels."
                                                                                    Signe Mayfield, Curator, The Art Corridor, 1986

"(Ting's) paintings.....immediately put me into good spirits."                                                                                                                                     Henry Woon, East/West News, Oct. 15, 1987

"Pleasant surprises......(Ting's) self-portrait,.....we can't resist smiling in return"
                                                                   Dorothy Burkhart, San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 23, 1987

"More subtle influences.....flattened compositions in paintings about a modern Chinese woman locked between past and future in a tight grid of reality."        Charlotte Moser, Artweek, Nov. 1, 1990

"(Ting's) work and personality exude excitement and passion.....witty and intriguing."
                                                                                     Jane Mont, Mandarin Oriental, Jan.-Apr., 1991

"A mythical quality imbues.....a moody (canvas)......a flat, Matisse-like design bare of detail,... a hint of geometry."                                                      Holly Johnson, The Sacramento Union, Feb. 8, 1992

"Mysticism (is) brought to the foreground.....Ting's paintings seem like artifacts from some Jungian dreamscape."                                           Ross Owens, Santa Clara Valley Weekly, Nov. 12-18, 1992

"The Incredibly delicate aurora borealis effect.....the pure light emanating.....these need no translation."                                                                          Ann Elliot Sherman, Metro, Jan. 13, 1993

"(Ting's art) delineates the poetic space between life's dualities.......it's accessible magic.  The viewer is safely seated in the eye of the hurricane, and in her best work, (Ting) uncovers the grandeur in tranquility."                                                              J. Pointer, Taos Magazine, May, 1993

"The grace of each brushstroke, in concert with her tightly composed large canvases, leads the viewer's eye on a journey that is both aesthetically pleasing and contemplative."                                                                                                 Rick Romancito,Tthe Taos News Tempo, June 3, 1993

"There is a magical glow, an aura of serenity,.......as if she achieved a kind of peace when she painted."                                                                                    Salli MaQuaid, ArtistWriter, April, 1994

“(Ting) renders Mother with great love and tenderness in her mixed-media ‘Compass-Ion.’  She is fluid, in motion, infinite…. ingeniously constructed the piece (as) a spiral, a vortex, converging at the altar.”                                                                                  Dory Hulburt, the Horse Fly, April 15, 2005

“Movement is a common thread…..Mimi’s abstracts, bold acrylics in forceful colors with weighty forms obedient to the physical laws of another reality. ….their spatial relationship achieves a kind of grace.”                                                                                 Dory Hulburt, the Horse Fly, July 15, 2005

“Ting’s crisp mixed-media piece…..barely enough cues to trigger the imagination…..teetered on the brink of too little ---breathtakingly.”                                      Dory Hulburt, the Horse Fly, Oct. 15, 2005

“Mimi’s abstractions balancing motion and gravitas are simply avant-garde.”
                                                                                        Dory Hulburt, the Horse Fly, March 15, 2006

“ …..Virginia said, ‘Mimi Chen Ting’s oil monotype….arrested my roving mind and held it as sure as if she held my head still in her hands.’”            Rick Romancito, The Toas News Tempo, Oct. 5, 2006

“There is both a subtle energy and a deep sense of longing …. that remind one of the lyrical quality found within the last works of Willem de Kooning …. a studied and careful geometry….. a sense of pleasure, even joy, in such work.”                                     Ian Findlay, Asian Art News, Nov/Dec 2008


 

Art Education

BA 1969, MA 1976, with concentration in Painting, California State University Graphics and Printing Technology, Performance as Integration of the Arts (California State University) Dance and Choreography (University of California) Handmade Paper and Printmaking Techniques (Japan) Papermaking and Printing Techniques with Ray Oeschger, Joseph Zirker Dance and Performance with Anna Halprin, Sherwood Chen, Hiroko Tamano

Awards

2003 National Endowment of the Arts Grant 1971 Second Prize in Painting, Lodi Art Festival, Lodi, California