About the Artist
Yuan Chen
Yuan Chen is a California abstract painter who works from Studio 31 at Art Works Downtown in San Rafael. Born in Fuzhou, China, she moved to the United States in 1999 and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. She began painting again at the College of Marin in 2008, went on to earn a BA in the Practice of Art from UC Berkeley in 2015, and completed an MFA in Studio Art at UC Davis in 2017. English is her second language, and she often finds herself grappling with cultural references and local slang. In painting she found what she calls her perfect second language. Abstract and unrestrained, her work becomes a way to speak with complete honesty: a dialogue with herself, with other people and with the natural world. Where words falter, color, texture and movement carry the conversation. Yuan works in acrylic and oil on canvas, linen and panel, from intimate 12-inch squares to large canvases four feet across. Her recent paintings carry titles such as Light Finds Form, Holding the Light, The Moment of Becoming and A Field of Joy, and her series include Unfold Before Your Eyes, Love You Softly, Kind of Blue and the Circle Series. Rather than telling specific stories, she builds open, intuitive spaces that invite viewers to reflect and connect in their own way. Each piece balances spontaneity and intention, shaped by curiosity and a search for harmony within complexity. At its core, her art reflects a journey toward inner peace and an effort to kindle empathy in others. She describes the canvas as a mirror for the complexities of human experience, and her paintings as a testament to the beauty found in embracing imperfection and the harmony discovered in chaos. Her work has been recognized with first-place awards from the Marin Society of Artists in 2019 and 2022 and at the Spark Art Show in Corte Madera in 2020, the Fay Nelson Award at UC Davis, and honors and a sculpture award from the UC Berkeley Art Practice department. She has exhibited widely across Northern California, including the Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis, Sausalito Center for the Arts, O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, Arc Gallery in San Francisco and Belvedere Tiburon Library, as well as Teravarna Art Gallery in Los Angeles. She is a regular participant in Marin Open Studios, and her studio in downtown San Rafael is open Wednesday to Saturday afternoons.
“Yuan Chen is a San Rafael abstract painter, born in Fuzhou, China, with an MFA from UC Davis. Her luminous acrylic and oil paintings speak in color, texture and movement, a second language beyond words.”
The Process
Inside the Studio
The Painting Process
Yuan Chen paints in Studio 31 at Art Works Downtown, a busy artists' building on Fourth Street in San Rafael, where visitors can find her at work from Wednesday to Saturday afternoons. She works in acrylic and oil, and sometimes mixed media, on canvas, linen and panel, moving between small 12-inch studies and canvases four feet wide. For Yuan, abstraction is a way to communicate beyond words. She is drawn to the expressive possibilities of paint itself, to color, texture and movement, and uses them to explore emotion, energy and the natural world. She does not set out to illustrate a story. Instead she lets each painting open into an intuitive space, a place where a viewer can bring their own memories and feelings. Each canvas is a balance of spontaneity and intention. Gestures and layers of color arrive freely, and then she responds to them with care, looking for harmony within complexity. She describes each stroke and color as a note in a symphony of emotions, a silent conversation with herself and an unspoken dialogue with others. Her titles show where that process leads: Light Finds Form, What Wants to Emerge, The Moment of Becoming, Quietly, It Opens. Many works grow into series, such as Unfold Before Your Eyes, Love You Softly and Kind of Blue, where she returns to an idea and lets it change from one panel to the next. Behind it all is a search for inner peace, and for the beauty found in embracing imperfection.