A Lightness of Being

Sumptuous, intricate, ornamented, these oil paintings are richly referential — they call to mind a range of associations from mandalas, the cosmos, cells, lace, brocade and more. I feel aligned with the long history of geometric and floral ornamentation the Far Eastern, Middle Eastern, and European craftsmen have long employed. They did so with the implicit understanding that pattern and repetition, which are endemic in nature, are primal in their rhythmic connection to the human nervous system. I identify my work with the long tradition of visual artists interested in notions of cosmology. I am, as my friend the artist Thomas Lyon Mills says, painting worlds within worlds with the aim of revealing profound, contemplative, slow truths.
Amy Cheng

Amy Cheng was born in Taiwan, raised in Brazil, Oklahoma and Texas. She received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York.

She has exhibited her paintings nationally and internationally; her work is held in a number of corporate and public collections, including The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY, New York University Langone Medical Center, Sheraton Hotels, Brussels, Belgium, Sam Houston University, Huntsville, TX, and Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Philadelphia, PA. She has completed a roster of public art commissions including projects at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Howard St. El Station, Chicago, IL, the 25th Avenue Subway Station, Brooklyn, NY, the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport MetroLink Station, the Jacksonville International Airport, FL, and the Western State Hospital, Tacoma, WA.

She received a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to Renmin University of China, Beijing, PRC in Spring 2017, a P.S. 122 Painting Center Fellowship in New York City for a ten-month residency in 2011-12, and a Senior Lecture/Research Fulbright fellowship to Brazil in Fall 2008. She has been awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowships, and an Arts International travel grant to China. She was a Professor Emerita of the Art Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz.