Amy Cao

Dancing with Alden #1 [filesize 66K]	Dancing with Alden #2 [filesize 64K]	Dancing with Alden #3 [filesize 52K]
Dancing with Alden #4 [filesize 56K]

Artist's Resume

My paintings flow from a quiet inner space where I no longer analyze, critique or think loudly. It is a process of witnessing the colors, shapes and lines emerging onto and into themselves. They are an expression of being alive.

Amy Cao

Born in Chengdu in the midst of China’s cultural revolution, Amy Cao experienced the contrast between the political suppression of artistic expression and the tenacious exuberance of the human spirit and the natural world. She still remembers the mostly blue, white and grey clothing moving through the bold colors of propaganda posters as well as the red Mao engraving her father made against the bright colored embroidery her grandma carefully tucked away. The over two thousand year old school, that was Amy’s back yard, was home to winter plum blossoms and ginkgo trees centuries old. The weathered tile roofs in orange and green, the intricate patterns of the cobblestone pathways and the sandstone reliefs of dragons and clouds all fascinated her. The carvings of calligraphic poems compelled her hands to pass over them thousands of times. Amy’s colorful childhood drawings created with irregular shapes and lines would be the roots of her later abstract style.

Amy began formal art training when she was 16. At 17 she chose to study under an artist who exposed her to many post cultural revolution artists, poets and musicians. Amy ventured to U.S. at age19. What was meant to be a six month stay became a 14 year artistic exploration. She studied fine art at The Evergreen State College. Amy now prints, paints and lives in Seattle.

Her art has become her awareness of the life that flows through her hand, a journey that transforms.