Lisa Hsieh

acrylic, painting, ink, pencil, charcoal, oil, art, mixed media, fine art, ucsd, csulb

Born 1981 in Taiwan.
Works and resides in Cypress, California.

2005 B.A. Fine Art with Honors
University of California, San Diego, CA

2008 California State University, Long Beach, CA
Graduate Course Work Completed.
Co-President, Art Education Student Association


Exhibitions

“Insights” CSULB University Art Museum Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition, Merit Award recipient, May 2008
“Windows” AESA Annual Student Art Show, February 2008
“The Waiting Room” UCSD Art Department art show artist. Honorable Mention, Nov 2004
“Comfort Zone” UCSD solo exhibition, Sept 2004
“Yellow America” UCSD Asian American Alliance Group Show, June 2004
“Lisa Hsieh” UCSD Cultural Center solo exhibition, March 2003
“Operation Orange” UCSD student group art show artist, May 2002

Consumers are mesmerized by the ideal that happiness and satisfaction can only be fulfilled through material acquisitions; corporate and media giants only perpetuating that illusion. One subconsciously spends his whole life building upon this myth - buying, wearing, using, and trashing, then repeating the cycle all over again in the hopes of presenting an image of him that he wishes himself to be. The U.S. consumer is an exhibitionist. This is a phenomenon of consumption propelled by Capitalism. By collecting images from popular periodicals, I have the components of rendering portraits of typical modern-day life. I paint abstract moments that occur in one’s mind during the process of making choices in a market place as a consumer; to capture the moment of suspended contemplation when one begins connecting the purchase of an item to a promise of a better quality of life. These moments are dreamlike, rendered by the large pools of poured acrylic paint onto the surfaces. They are spaces that one’s subconscious retreats to when, for a few seconds, one is disconnected from reality and has drifted into a cloud of imagination and hope- all inspired by a man-made product. Essentially, material acquisition is a means of identity construction. The drive of consumerism is the human desire for progress and prosperity. The correlation of objects in life and the memories and meanings they therefore represent will always be of interest to me.