Thu Nguyen

About me:
I was born in Saigon, Vietnam. Being very shy, I spent much of my childhood hiding away in my bedroom painting, instead of playing with other children. My first brush with success was a Best of Show prize at the 1974 children's exhibition in Saigon sponsored by UNICEF. In 1975 Saigon fell and in the resulting confusion, I was separated from my parents. I ended up in a refugee camp near Hong Kong for a year before immigrating to the United States as an orphan. After one very snowy and cold winter in Pennsylvania, I went to Los Angeles to stay with some relatives.

After getting my art degree, I have since settled down to pursue my art career in Los Angeles, later Seattle, and Hawaii, with the big excitement of adopting my first daughter from China and my second daughter from Vietnam.

Professional qualifications:

BFA in painting, California State University Long Beach.
Two grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Three grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.
My work is represented in many public and private collections in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Mexico.

My work has been shown at Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., Tacoma Art Museum, WA, Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, Naples, FL, Ackland Museum of Art, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC, Alexandria Museum of Art - Alexandria Louisiana, Yellowstone Art Museum - Billings Montana, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM.