Dawn breaks the night and brightens my heart

Chen Chiou-Hsya, born in 1947 in Taichung, is a professional artist who works and resides in Taipei. As a child, she lived with her parents in Hualien on Taiwan’s eastern coast, where the landscape of mountains embracing the sea left a lasting and beautiful impression on her. Her works often feature grand mountains and vast oceans, with a particular fondness for depicting sunrises and sunsets—symbols of life’s radiant splendor.

After graduating from the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University, she pursued further studies at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the City University of New York, and later earned her master’s degree at the Graduate School of Fine Arts at Long Island University.

With a comprehensive background in art education, Chen has studied both Eastern and Western painting and developed a unique artistic style that fuses the two traditions. One example is her innovative use of acrylic paint on traditional East Asian paper scrolls.

Her work frequently features rich red pigments—red, to her, is an especially captivating color. Sunrises and sunsets, flames, and red-hued rocks are recurring motifs throughout her paintings. Immersed in the world of art, she believes that the greatest joy in life is creation itself.

Her painting “Dawn breaks the night and brightens my heart” portrays a woman seated in an open field, gazing toward the rising sun. The woman’s unadorned nudity symbolizes the truest form of self, and her body, stained crimson by the first light of dawn, appears almost engulfed in flames. Yet, as the sun rises, her inner world brightens as well. The work reflects the artist’s desire to break free from the confines of her inner self—an intimate self-portrait that also echoes the deepest inner calling shared by many women.

Chen has held numerous solo exhibitions both domestically and internationally. Her works have received distinctions such as the Special Excellence Award in Oil Painting from the Tokyo Museum of Art in Japan, the Special Excellence Award at the Asian International Art Exhibition, and an Honorable Selection in Calligraphy.

She has been invited to exhibit in Tokyo, Seoul, Busan, Shanghai, Beijing, Xiamen, Sydney, New York, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Paris, Versailles, Berlin, Hamburg, and more. She has also participated multiple times in faculty–student joint exhibitions at the College of Art of Long Island University (held at the Hillwood Art Museum), and her works have been collected by Long Island University.