The Serenity series art exhibit at the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women's Health

May Shei was born in a HAKKA town in South Taiwan and grew in an artistic family. She graduated from the Arts and Crafts program at Tainan University of Technology and the Chinese Culture University with a major in commercial design and a minor in oil and Chinese painting. May is an art teacher and professional artist focusing on an abstract, linear style. She brings the richness of her country’s history into her artwork, blending the traditional techniques of Asian artists before her and in her contemporary style. She often portrays the creatures of her childhood, now endangered and protected species, as well as ancient figures from Taiwan’s past. Her work examines the abstract and the natural, and the ways in which they collide with our modern world. May’s work blends Eastern and Western styles in a fresh fashion and has received multiple awards in several San Francisco Bay Area art competitions. She has been an invited and featured artist in many galleries and museum exhibitions. She juries the Salon d’Automne Paris and she teaches Chinese Painting at Pacific Art League (Palo Alto). Every year she holds solo art shows in Taiwan, China, and the US.

 

My devotion to art started way before I went to preschool. I painted and made crafts all the time. I grew up in a small town in Taiwan, where the traditional Hakka culture was everywhere – from antique home decor and paintings to murals and sculptures in the temples – my childhood was a combination of old and new. We also lived in a national park, so the environment was full of beautiful, verdant life. It was like an art book everywhere. I left home to study art at 16. After I graduated from college, I worked in Kua-Hua Advertising Ltd. for two years, then got married and had two kids. Throughout everything I never stopped illustrating and making art. I participated in international art competitions, and was juried into shows, receiving a wide variety of awards. Because of my background majoring in commercial art and design with a minor in Chinese painting, oil, and watercolor, I use different design elements such as "point ", "line", and "space " in my pieces, as well as bright colors, on silk or rice paper. My art mirrors my life’s journey – so unpredictable – yet I am blessed to be able to look back and see all the influences and people who have helped me along the way.

 

I am a San Francisco Bay Area painter. My medium is transparent watercolor on paper. I have a BA in Studio Art from Mills College. I painted and studied drawing in Paris, which culminated in a one-person show at the Fondation des États Unis, Cité Universitaire. I hold an MA in Education from San Francisco State University. While at SFSU, I studied watercolor with Kenneth Potter, AWA (American Watercolor Association). I am an active member of the SF Women Artists Gallery, the East Bay Landscape Painters, and the California Watercolor Association.

 

I grew up in an art-loving family in Southern California. My mother was a painter and my father was in the carnival business, which I credit for my love of multiple colors and action. Kenneth Potter is the teacher who inspired me to focus on watercolor. I paint en plein air in a spirit of spontaneity, play, and celebration. I especially enjoy the camaraderie of painting with a group, as we all interpret the world in our own unique ways.

 

https://janesneed.com/

Sharon Virtue is a British ‘art activist’ of Jamaican-Irish decent. She is a painter, dancer and ceramic artist currently living in Fairfax, California. She has a strong social practice and has worked internationally on creative development projects in Mozambique, Uganda, Brazil, Haiti, America, and England. She believes artists are agents of transformation. Her mission is to inspire, encourage and provide access to the greater community in the creation of art.

 

My childhood was steeped in ceremonial circumstances. I grew up surrounded and fascinated by religious iconography. In the realms of my imagination, spiritual images and stories were transformed into otherworldly magical beings, signs, and portents. Growing up as a brown child in England, inspiration came from the bewitching ‘exoticism’ and mythological tales of the Orientalists, Pre-Raphaelites, and Les Fauves. Personal connections to Africa, and my African ancestors has conjured something deeply familiar in me – the same feeling one experiences when remembering dreams. My works narrate stories of shape shifting, initiation, metamorphosis, and power. They contain mythological beings which exist amidst the veils of humankind, the natural world and the supernatural. I use many mediums. My work reflects my influences including magic, ritual, mythology, science, music, color, patterns, mathematics, poetry, dance, anthropology, and the natural world. As a culture bearer, anything from my daily life and experiences of the world can be alchemically transformed. The viewer is invited to encounter the magical places and beings that inhabit my imagination: to explore, decipher, and be immersed in an atmosphere of contemplation – remembering or creating their own personal mythologies – and calling to mind that which is being lost and devalued in our world.

 

https://virtuevision.org/