Vivien Ebright Chung
Vivien Ebright Chung is an artist working in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, where she took interdisciplinary classes in both fashion and painting. She worked in the fashion industry before returning to painting full-time in 2019. Her understanding and interest in the body, clothed and unclothed, has hugely influenced the direction of her painting. Her work addresses sexual identity and the metaphysics of nature through an ongoing dialogue with art history.
Collect Bean: What does growth mean to you?
Vivien Ebright Chung: Growth means being open to change and seeking out the nourishment to cultivate that change in an optimum way.
Collect Bean: What does an ideal day in your studio look like?
Vivien Ebright Chung: Any day where I come into the studio and enter deeply into the work, paint myself out of the studio, and leave feeling invigorated is a great day.
Collect Bean: What is the kindest thing someone can tell you about your work?
Vivien Ebright Chung: I really enjoy hearing from people that my work brings them a sense of peace and joy. A lot of my work depicts a kind of post-coital bliss or idealistic pastoral dream state, so it’s wonderful to have people disarmed by my work in such a genuine way.
Collect Bean: Where are you currently finding inspiration?
Vivien Ebright Chung: I am often inspired by new friends I make around Los Angeles; I suppose you could call them muses. They aren’t usually depicted in a literal sense within my work; I’m more interested in appreciating energy than appearances, but they’re in the paintings somewhere. I use my painting to explore power, gender, and queer sexuality, so anytime I meet someone who sparks a new perspective for me, I try to document that in the work as a sort of relic of their influence on my life. It’s incredible how beautiful and exceptional other people are, how fragile and brilliant; that’s what inspires me right now.
Collect Bean: What does your painting process look like from start to finish?
Vivien Ebright Chung: I work in a very direct and improvisational way, often working on several paintings at once to avoid overworking them. Once I’ve prepared a canvas, I jump in with some toning or underpainting based on a color direction I’m interested in or poses I feel drawn to. Recently, I’ve been painting a canvas full of Rococo clouds straight off. I start building the figures out of those initial marks, refining, making choices about where to add and where to let things just be. Every now and then, I might stop and look at images of paintings or old heroes like Fragonard or Rubens to remind myself who I’m trying to be in conversation with. I work until the moment when another mark will be too much and try to pull back a bit before that moment comes.
Collect Bean: How do you balance your practice with your daily life?
Vivien Ebright Chung: I have a family and a day job making costumes. I just make the juggling of all that part of my practice. My role as a wife and mother is important to my work, whereby my work completely rejects the traditional point of view of domestic life and indulges with full force a world of sensual abandon. I am not able to be in the studio every day, so I use the time away from my paintings to think about them, and I’d like to believe it keeps them fresh. The longing for my work allows me to really savor it.
