Elim Mak Artworks
Artist Statement
Art is my ministry, my meditation, my refuge.
Art is a feeling.
I regard my artworks as surrealistic metaphors that contemplate the human experience. I am particularly interested in exploring themes about race, religion, spirituality, feminism, psychology, and the Chinese North American diasporic identity through the reimagining of traditional Asian art and design motifs, folklore, and iconography.
Recurring images include female deities, fairy maidens, monsters, and mythological creatures portraying love, power, innocence, anger, fear, sadness, and loss. Acrylic, watercolor, and collage on paper, wood, and canvas are my preferred mediums, where each brushstroke is its own cosmos.
Artist Bio
Elim is a Chinese Canadian American visual artist living and working in New York City.
Elim’s art career has spanned from comic book and storyboard illustrator to graphic designer, and her fine art paintings have been exhibited in select exhibitions around the metropolitan area. Her pathway to becoming an artist was shaped by her unconventional upbringing and rebellious formative years in the US and Canada as a born-again Christian fundamentalist preacher’s daughter, and she sought refuge as an outsider in socially conscious and avant-garde artistic circles throughout her life.
In addition to her studio practice, Elim works as an art therapist in the mental health field which subsequently informs, deepens, and enriches her artwork: focusing on the exploration of the inner life, and tapping into one’s emotions as a catalyst for intuitive art-making.
Elim draws inspiration from her Chinese heritage, traditional Asian art, design, and folklore, Buddhist philosophy, and 17th & 18th century European art and fashion. In addition to her classical training in Western painting and drawing, Elim studied traditional Tibetan art under the tutelage of Pema Rinzin, contemporary master Tibetan painter. This specialized discipline enhanced and honed her meditative brushwork style, where each line becomes its own cosmos.
Elim describes her philosophy towards art quite simply: Art is her ministry, her meditation, and her refuge. In the end, Art is a feeling that she wishes to share with others.
