Cathy Liu lives in San Francisco and on the Big Island of Hawaii where she’s constantly inspired by the fragility and force of life. She grew up in an area of San Jose where the cherry orchards were replaced by Eichler homes. She left suburbia for Florence, Italy where she graduated with a B.A. in Italian Studies and met her husband, Architect Craig Steely. She worked for muckraking Mother Jones Magazine, but after five years she found painting amoebic shapes preferable to raking muck.
Artist Statement: "My abstract organic paintings are a playful meditation on life––how we're interconnected with everyone and everything, yet uniquely shaped and part of a vibrant dynamic whole. Originally, the organic shapes flowed naturally from the wood grain of my first plywood paintings. The discarded wood scraps were a physical reminder of being a small part of the whole. My canvas paintings similarly elaborate upon the idea that only part of the picture is visible. The canvases are painted beyond the borders with the images extending out over the edges. In order to get a true sense of the paintings, they must be viewed in person. After many years of canvas paintings, I returned to nature, finding driftwood and rocks to paint––again, just little pieces of a majestic, only imaginable, whole."
