Beth Xia 'Sheep' Print Available
Monday, October 27, 2025 
Artist: Beth Xia
Title: Sheep
Medium: Giclee Print
Size: (A2) 42 x 59.4 cm
Edition: OPEN
Price: $129
Beth Xia is a Chinese American artist who paints luminous dreamscapes where memory and myth dissolve into color. Born in Guangzhou in 1993, she grew up among incense filled temples and neon markets, absorbing the contrast of ancient ritual and restless commerce. At seventeen she moved to California, earning a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design and later an MFA at Columbia University. These crossings feed her work: ink traditions meet acrylic haze, eastern motifs float within western abstraction, creating atmospheres that feel both intimate and vast. Xia begins each canvas with automatic graphite marks, letting hand movement summon half remembered stories. She then layers transparent washes, gold leaf, and embroidered thread until figures emerge like spirits caught between worlds. Recurrent symbols include carp swimming through clouds, lotus lanterns adrift on midnight tides, and solitary girls whose eyes reflect entire cities. The palette shifts from jade and vermilion to electric violet, suggesting twilight moments when reality loosens.
Her 2022 solo show at Kasmin Gallery presented monumental scrolls where visitors could walk alongside continuous narratives of migration and return. Xia describes the process as breathing with the painting, allowing error and repair to remain visible, scars that honor impermanence. Recent murals in Shenzhen and Los Angeles transform public walls into shimmering portals, inviting commuters to pause within daydreams. Commercial collaborations with fashion houses translate her textures onto silk scarves worn by performers on world tours. Awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia. Whether working on linen twenty feet wide or rice paper the size of a postcard, she seeks the fragile edge where personal history dissolves into collective myth, reminding viewers that identity is not a fixed shore but a tide forever arriving and departing.