Biography:
My Linh Mac is a multi-media artist, visual designer and art educator based in Chicago. Mac is best known for her digital paintings, traditional oil paintings and her series of contemporary ‘galactic /no-brush’ paintings Ranbu. As an accomplished painter, her works portray beauty in humble places with her signature style of deep and vibrant accent colors. While Mac’s paintings have varied genres, from conceptual, abstract, and figurative to contemporary, her digital and visual design works are commercial.
Mac discovered nontraditional techniques bring further variety to her paintings through the use of color manipulation and the manipulation of materials and presentation platforms. Her niche is the ability to produce art within one medium that looks as if it were created within a different medium. Each of Mac’s artworks “speak for itself”, her unique approach of combining elements and medium gives her the credibility of an inventive artist and visual designer. What makes her work stand out among young emerging artists is how she incorporates not only technical skills and knowledge from multiple creative fields of design, art, and technologies; but also, her personal experience and cultural exposure from different parts of the world as a traveler.
Mac is originally from Vietnam and pursued her art education in Singapore, Australia, and the United States. Mac received her Bachelor of Art in Digital Media & Painting in 2016 from Valparaiso University and her Master’s in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2019. Mac’s multi-media art works are represented by En Foco and RubberNeck Gallery in Chicago, Mona Niko Gallery- California, Brauer Museum- Indiana, Queen Victoria Museum and Gallery- Australia, INTACT international- Canada, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA) Museum- South Korea and in many private collections across the United States and around the world. Through her creative works, she is currently a member of National Oil and Acrylic Painting Society (NOAPS), Oil Painting of America (OAP). In early 2020, Mac was awarded ’Best In Show’ for Prospectus - The Gateway International Painting Competition and recently joined the International Biennial of Contemporary Art & Design in Italy as one of their respective international selection committee (ISC) members for the LORENZO IL MAGNIFICO AWARD & THE LEONARDO DA VINCI AWARD.
Artwork Description/Artist Statement: Murasaki is the latest art piece from Mac’s popular series: Ranbu (2019). This is a year and a half long project consists of over 70 pieces that have been acquired by many private collections, and residences across the United States and around the world. This non-brush painting series was inspired and named after a Japanese pop single Ranbu No Merodi” - Melody of the Wild Dance by SID. This body of work reflects my playfulness with colors, pushing the boundaries between the world of design with its structures, principles, functionality and the fine art world of rawness, chaos and freedom. With my multidisciplinary practice, I creates this series as an abstract and contemporary series. The series has been described as ‘paintings that paint themselves’ and ‘camouflaged painting’ - as each acrylic painting was created without the use of paintbrushes on laser-cut plywood, while the final product looks like a Victorian piece of ceramic on
uniform square canvases. This series marked a milestone in my fine art career not just because it was the longest or my most popular work by far, but it also marked my debut into the realm of contemporary art. Through this project, I also found my artistic niche by manipulating materials and presentation platforms to produce art within one medium, that looks as if it were created within a different medium.