---

---

Hi, I'm Hung-Tsu Chen.   I am an artist living near San Jose, California in US. I went to San Jose State University for BS and MFA, 26 years apart.

I discovered art later in life.  It has been my saving grace in euphoria and misery.  I paint the figure and abstract paintings for different reasons.  I love the human figure in art (mainly women.)  People are their most vulnerable when they are completely nude, and what remain are most genuine and honest.  I paint the figure because I am able to feel included when I translate and share that human sensibility with the world.  I am excited to be here.

I paint abstracts for me.  It's an unspoken language I have with myself.  Painting abstract helps me reconcile and co-exist with the different greys in this world.  I'm not looking for a logical reasoning behind the grey areas or to justify the wrongs.  I am looking to settling the dispute in my head between my conscience and my righteousness.  I paint abstracts to plaster and gorilla tape that "paradox" onto the painting that so when I complete the painting, the battle is no longer able to follow me everywhere I go.  Almost like an exorcism, but not that scary.  It helps me quiet and clear my mind for other conflicts in my head that arises at the next bus stop.  so it acts like a self-treatment/self-defense process.  

They are nude depictions of the self, not just me the self, but the internal human self, cause who hasn't been through a few things.  I call these abstract paintings Innerscapes.  The human figure is the description of the physical external; the abstract is the emotional mental internal.

People experience my painting instead of understanding it.  I don't explain what this streak of line or this set of marks means, or why its there, it just is.  The viewer might have a different interpretation about it, and that's what it was meant to be for them.  People take what they are ready to receive.