Echo In Spring

Kimchi Hoang paintings are works of the imagination. She says: “My artworks reflect my soul, my feelings, my inner world. Look closely and you will see images of the traditional culture that surrounded me in Vietnam and that is still a part of me. I also engage with the world around me through art. I guide people to look inward, and to reflect on the environment that surrounds them. Art is an expressive language.”

“My life has been shaped by many forces and has moved in unintended directions. This is true of my paintings too. My ideas come to me in dreams or in fleeting memories. As quickly as I can, I commit the images to paper, and then I feel free and fortunate, I feel boundless happiness.”

Kimchi Hoang grew up in Vietnam during the war when, as a young woman, she was not permitted to pursue her interest in becoming a musician or a visual artist. Working around the oppressive system, however, she was able to begin her music education, and found a way to earn a living as a music teacher and help her family get out of poverty. After arriving in the US in 1997, she earned an AAS in Sound Arts and an AFA in Fine Arts at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College. She received her BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2013. She feels fortunate to have had excellent instructors and professors who broadened her horizons, and helped her break out of conventional patterns and develop new ideas while she studied contemporary art. This gave her imagination full reign as she became an abstract artist.