Jessie Chen is a self-taught artist from Toronto, Ontario. Jessie gravitates towards the settings that evoke a sense of tranquility and nostalgia, and she hopes to elicit the same response from her audience through the portrayal of the interactions between light and objects, as well as letting the shadows telling the unspoken story. Her medium of choice is acrylic paint, and she utilizes the layering of muted colours showcase the complexity of shadows in an ordinary scene.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I was fascinated when I first learned about the phenomenon Anemoia: nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, I have moved to many different cities throughout my life, and have lived in many different places I called “home”. As memory fades overtime like the flowing river, what remains in my mind of my different homes is the sense of calm associated with them. At difficult times, I especially yearn for that feeling again, to belong in a space and time that evokes tranquility – nostalgia. My body of works encompasses places or objects that hold familiarity to me, with muted colours to symbolize the haziness of distant memories. I hope to trigger the sense of anemoia in my audience, for them to yearn for that point of space and time they never experienced.