Athena Bing He
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Summary Biography
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Athena Bing He was born in 1969, and was raised in Tianjin, China, a suburb of Beijing. From early in her childhood, her mother made up her mind that her daughter was going to be an artist. As such, her technical education began at age four, strictly overseen by her math-teaching mom. During her teenage years, her uncle, Wulin Ye, a very well known Chinese painter and sculptor, tutored her in art. Her training continued at the Central Academy of Art and Design, now part of Qing Hua University, Beijing, China. She was selected to attend this famous art school at age 17, after three days of extensive testing and interviews that resulted in the school choosing her out of over 20,000 applicants. This was the Mao period of time where he brought to the Central Academy highly trained Russian professors from St. Petersburg. Her teachers included these Russian professors as well as Chinese art professors trained by them. As a result, the Academy became known as the most rigorous art school in the country, and was highly sought after by young Chinese seeking art school training. Its alumni include numerous famous Chinese artists, many of which are working now in Europe and the United States, as well as China. The school gave her a firm background in realism, and a solid foundation in painting and drawing, as well as in portraiture and the nude. After graduating at the top of her class, she was hired by the Academy to teach drawing, which she did for 2 years. As a result of her participation in the Tiananmen Square events, she was forced to leave China. Migrating through the Philippine Islands, she arrived in the United States in 2001, settling first in Queens, NY. She continued her art studies at the National Academy and the Art Students League, adding theatre classes to her agenda at Hunter College, while also taking English language classes. She continued her art teaching at RED YELLOW BLUE Art School in Flushing, teaching painting and drawing as well as portfolio preparation for teenagers. She teaches now painting and drawing to all ages and expertise, originally in Studio A Gallery, the gallery she began on Main Street in Tarrytown, NY in 2009, and now in Studio A, her personal studio at the Munson Mansion at 830 South Broadway, on the border of Irvington and Tarrytown. Davy, her son, is now 21, and in the U.S. Navy as a petty officer with a future in electronics and engineering. Since opening Studio A, Gallery Athena has gained an outstanding reputation as an art teacher, and personally finds teaching an extremely rewarding vocation. With this in mind, and after her son entered the armed forces, she took the opportunity to close her gallery and begin an MFA program at Lesley University's School of Art and Design (Art Institute of Boston). She receives a large scholarship from the School where she will complete her MFA program in June 2017. She has loved her time at Lesley where she has extensively broadened her knowledge of western art, produced many new artworks, and where she has been able to connect her Chinese past to new American identity. Now a U.S. citizen, she has developed special insights and understandings as a Chinese immigrant, and with one foot still in China and one foot now in America, her paintings reflect these new understandings and insights in some detailed and consequential ways that have become part of the visual narratives of her paintings. Her MFA thesis investigates such issues as feminism and patriarchy in China and the role of "ruins and fragmentation" as floating signifiers of a never-ending destruction and construction within the Chinese psyche and Chinese society. She is a committed and passionate painter who has taken her outstanding technical skills into the realm of story-telling that produce canvas surfaces of intrigue and amazement. Athena demands from her work what she is most interested in as subject matter, the human condition, in all its variety and multiplicity, one that expresses an ongoing individual search for vital meaning within a journey of becoming rather than being. She brings to her artworks indicators of identity, collective culture, history, philosophy, personality, community, and emotion.
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Athena's love for teaching is also part of the motivation in seeking the terminal MFA degree, allowing her to teach on the college level. Athena's private teaching continues, with classes in drawing and painting for children, teenagers (art school portfolio production included), and adults (many of which have been practicing artists seeking her technical expertise). Teaching to small groups, she has developed a unique and personal approach to art instruction. Her one-on-one teaching methods include painting and drawing from the model simultaneously with her students. She feels that this approach provides the best step-by-step instruction in skills and techniques while it perpetuates continuous discussion on the development of content in a work of art. This highly professional studio teaching of young and old by Athena, who's teaching style is more about synergy than it is about instruction, provides her students an atmosphere of gentle inculcation through an empathetic approach, instilling the desire for high competence in art-making and thinking. As well, a symbiotic aspiration and determination for success is instilled into all of her students. Athena's foundation for this approach comes out of a deep love for art, and is motivated by a sense of selfless and beneficent return. Her belief in art as a highly meaningful way to experience and live life is communicated most effectively through a sharing of art's qualitative and virtuous abundance. Her students walk away not only skilled but motivated to continue the never-ending challenge of art making.
February 2017