Waimea Artist Named Finalist in Art Muse Contest

Her Story by Thu Nguyen. Courtesy photo.

A Waimea artist has been selected as a finalist in the emerging artist category for the October 2018 Art Muse Contest.

Thu Nguyen’s painting Her Story incorporates oil and gold leaf on panel, and is part of her Sapa Vietnam series. Nguyen said the series is inspired by the beauty of Sapa, Vietnam—a rural town nestled in the mountains of North Vietnam—and the story of her mother.

“I fell in love with this particular location because of its beautiful rice terraces and the Hmong people,” she wrote in a summary about the series.

Nguyen’s mother grew up on a farm in Sapa. Like many residents there, she was poor and never attended school or learned to read. Families worked together—children included—to maintain farms and support one another. In 1954, the country split in half and Nguyen’s mother left her family behind at the age of 16. She traveled south to Saigon and did not reunite with her family until after the war in 1975.

Contest judge Carol Marine said of Nguyen’s painting: “The face is well rendered, and I absolutely love the mish-mash of colors and textures in the clothing. It all goes very well with the gold leaf.”