An exhibition of recent paintings by Su-Li Hung, works that capture the fundamental role she believes Buddhism can play to battle the turmoil that afflicts the world today, will open at the June Kelly Gallery on December 12.  The paintings will remain on view through January 20, 2015.

According to Buddhist teachings, everything in our lives co-exists, is connected with everything else … humans, the animal kingdom, the environment, the forests and rivers, all are equal.  She believes that humans must focus their lives on the search for knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment and strive to live up to the precepts of Buddhism -- kindness, compassion, empathy and equanimity.  All are pathways to peace and serenity, the ultimate goal.

Buddha himself is prominent in Hung’s paintings, as are trees and their leaves.  The trees refer to the Bodhi tree under which Buddha was believed to be sitting when he achieved enlightenment in the sixth century BCE.  She sees in trees the cycle of life as they grow their leaves in the spring and then shed them in the fall.  In some cases, she gets close to the trees as she paints them and finds interesting abstract shapes and patterns and the brilliant colors that animate her paintings.

“The tree grows, leaves come, go, and return, evoking for me new inspiration with each season,” Hung says.

And she sees the rivers, too, as always on the move, day and night, and ever changing as they flow to the sea.

Hung sees beauty in the tree itself -- in the strength of its trunk, the limitless variety in the shape of its leaves, its bark rough or perhaps smooth, in the remarkable skeletal appearance of its branches when the leaves fall.  Trees have been a principal focus of her work since the 90s – an enduring passionate interest in the abstraction she sees in trees in all their permutations.

Hung was born in Taiwan and lives and works in New York.  She is a graduate of the National Taiwan University in Taipei and also studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy School of Fine Arts in New York.

Hung’s works have been shown in numerous one-person and group exhibitions in the United States, Asia and Europe.  She has authored 31 books of her poetry and essays that have been published in the past decade in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Hung’s work is represented in numerous collections world-wide, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum in Oregon, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the British Museum in London, the National Museum of Fine Art in Hanoi, the National Museum of History in Taipei, the New York Public Library, New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and Alliance Capital Management, New York.