Min Zhong

I have always been passionate about drawing since I was a small child. After high school I took a break from the doodling hobby to focus on my engineering studies. I graduated with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and have been working as a software engineer for Microsoft since 2001 and then Google since 2006. Soon after settling down in the Pacific Northwest, I explored various forms of artistic expression and rediscovered art as my true calling. My medium of choice is oil. I began this endeavor by taking my first oil painting class at the Kirkland Art Center in the fall of 2002, and have gone on to take several workshops and classes from teachers such as Tony Ryder, Ned Mueller, Matt Buchner, and Michele Rushworth. I am also a regular attendee of a figure drawing session led by Lyle Silver in Seattle. I have exhibited in juried shows in the Edmonds Art Festival in 2007 and 2009, and the Enumclaw's BaseCamp Art fair in 2007. I am inspired by a range of historical and modern masters such as Remembrandt, Corot, Winslow Homer, Tony Ryder, Ted Geoschner, and Thomas Buechner. My artist friends Louise Britton, Lyle Silver, and many others are constant inspiration and help me grow throughout the years.

I explore a variety of genres: landscape, figure, portrait, and still life, often weather/season influenced. With all these subjects, I look for both a visual appeal and a theme. I strive to create compositions that tell
stories and evoke emotions with shapes and values. I find visual interest in the form, texture, color of the objects and the viewing angles. Rather than seeing each object as a separate entity, I emphasize theme as I feel a theme establishes a relationship between objects, tells a story and directly affects the depth of the work. I am interested in the correct modeling of
the forms and observation of interplay between form and light, and exploring how to say more with less, favoring simplicity over complexity. I paint in
a somewhat Alla Prima style as I think that brings spontaneity to paintings, but not purely Alla Prima as I often make correction after I put away the painting and see it with a fresh eye.

I work from life mainly, as I find it beneficial for my learning of the lighting and the modeling of forms this way. Recently I have been working primarily on still lifes, in part because I am the mother of an active
two-year old boy and still lifes offer a practical choice of subject for life studies. Art helps me see the world with gratitude, and the process of conveying my views has been spiritually meditative to me. I also find that
artistic creativity and logical reasoning are complimentary, as the ingenuity, rigor and logical decisions essential to both a good painting and
a successful engineering project are quite similar. Each painting is a problem solving process as much as an artistic expression, and I enjoy the growth from having worked through the process and challenges each time.