When Chinese-born artist Ping Zheng was still a child, she walked into a field of red wild berries, a sea of red beneath a yellow sun. She felt suddenly relieved of her mother's constant criticism. Freedom, the very opposite of the expectations for a little girl in a conservative household, exploded within her. It is a memory she carries to this day. In her own visual vocabulary, Zheng reenacts this moment repeatedly in ways that bring a sense of unbounded creativity to viewers through a use of forms and symbols of her own making. Though seemingly as naïve as a nursery rhyme, her works are also quite complex, encompassing several different interpretations of the word, Reflection, the title of this series.
Born in the port city of Wenzhou in the south of China, Zheng moved frequently following her father's trajectory from a miner to an architect, residing for much of her life in Shanxi province, north of Beijing. As a teenager, she left home to escape the grim punishments from her family only to find herself in the monotonous training of the Central Academy High School in Beijing. The school had an exchange program with Camberwell College under the University of the Arts in London which she eagerly joined to escape the strictures she had experienced in China. From there, she pursued a superlative education at Slade's and then, a master's degree at Rhode Island School of Design.
–Barbara Pollack
excerpts from essay: Ping Zheng Reflections
Ping Zheng received an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016 and a BFA in painting from the University College of London, Slade School of Fine Art in 2014. She has completed artist residencies at the Rancho Linda Vista Arts Community, in Oracle, Arizona, and the Vermont Studio Center, in Johnson, Vermont among others. Recently, Zheng has been reviewed in ArtForum, the New Yorker, Houston Chronicle, and featured on Glasstire. Her works are included in the collections of JP Morgan Chase Bank, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the Cleveland Clinic Art Program, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is co-represented by Kristen Lorello, New York.
![L-R, Installation view at at Geary Contemporary: Ping Zheng A 'Ray of Sunlight' (2022) Oil Stick on ... [+]WALKER ESNER PHOTOGRAPHY](https://artlogic-res.cloudinary.com/w_600,c_limit,f_auto,fl_lossy,q_auto/ws-artlogicwebsite1529/usr/images/press/main_image/items/dd/dd66a9d4da8e488baa02507483d2718b/pz-forbes.jpg)
