Elaine Sheen is a painter and sculptor based in San Francisco, California. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Animation and Illustration from San Jose State University and is currently pursuing an MFA in painting at the California College of the Arts. Through her art, she crafts a world that blends abstraction and storytelling. Her work explores interconnected themes, including psychology, vulnerability, nature, adult dilemmas, childhood, and self-expression/repression.

 

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Artist Statement:

As an artist, my work explores the complexities of human relationships in social, cultural, and familial ways, and the dynamic between emotional expression in children and repression in adults. The two figures in many of my paintings are a child with circular features and a sculptural adult figure without a mouth. These figures share the same space, with the adult silently observing the child. The absence of a mouth on the adult figure symbolizes emotional repression, while the carefree child embodies exuberant expression.  Children naturally express themselves; adults often repress their emotions in response to social and cultural pressures, both consciously and unconsciously. In my work, I embrace shadows through art as a form of self-reflection. The adult figure mirrors a child’s experience. 

 

Natural elements—air, trees, stones, mountains, soil, ocean, and earth—are present in many of these paintings. Nature connects me to cherished childhood memories in Taiwan and offers comfort when I feel alone in the States. In the world I create through my art, the green hues on the ground are symbolic of nature, while the warm beige backgrounds bridge the natural world to the human body.

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