Thu Nguyen is an American realist with a modernist vision. Her paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Nguyen looks at America's heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty she finds in everyday life. Her paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary. Thu was educated at the California State Long Beach University. She pushes the boundaries of the realist tradition with her multilayered imagery. Life, death, passage, memory, and confrontation coexist easily in her world. Thu and her children are the cast of characters that appear in her dreamlike narrative works. Although the scenes are set around her mundane daily activities in her island home in Hawaii, or the surroundings of her studio and residence in Washington state, they represent a deeper, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home."
Thu Nguyen is an American realist with a modernist vision. Her paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Nguyen looks at America's heart—its land a...
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