Collection: Caroline Young Artist Biography and Art Gallery Collection

Caroline Young is an American artist born in Hong Kong to Chines-American ex-patriots. Later on she moved to Hawaii to attend the University of Hawaii, majoring in French. While studying there she met Lam Oi Char, a powerful mentor who inspired her to change her major to art and to become a professional artist. "Lam Oi Char changed my life. My mother had encouraged me to paint as a teenager in Hong Kong where I was born and raised. But it was not until I began studying watercolor wit Lam Oi Char that I gained the confidence to succeed as an artist," says Caroline Young. From her teacher Caroline Young learned the traditional forms of Chinese art and filled her silken rural landscapes. She chose as her medium Chinese watercolors, acrylic and gouache. Caroline mixes her own colors to achieve unique and vibrant tones, unavailable in commercially prepared paints.Young was often called the "female counterpart of Otsuka", a well known male Japanese silk painter; but whereas he prefers the kipula, the inner lining of the kimono, she paints on raw silk. Caroline Young’s soft, lyrical brush work and graceful composition has earned her critical and popular acclaim.

Caroline Young is an art master who breathes the rarified air of the few illustrious masters of the "Delicate Style" technique of Ancient Oriental painting. Young's images are magnificently hypnotic. She mixes her own colors to achieve her one of a kind luscious look. Each piece is created on decadent, multi-layered artist's paper that mesmerizes with subtly embossed patterns, and glistens with the rippling glitter of perhaps a fine photograph mixed with exotic silks. Young's art focuses on interpreting the drama, romance, and magic of the mythology and history of ancient China and Japan.  Although her Japanese themes brought her to fame, Young decided to return to Chinese historical subjects. "I wanted to pay homage to my great-grandparents, who immigrated to Hawaii from China, and to commemorate the bicentennial celebration of the first Chinese to arrive in Hawaii." In classical Oriental painting, artists approach their work the way pianists in the West might approach the existing compositions of the great masters. Each new painting was a performance that the artist rehearsed for by practicing the performance of earlier painters.

Caroline Young took that wisdom to heart. Her delicate watercolors on silk pay homage to classical Chinese technique called the "delicate style," and the lessons she learned from her mentor, Lam Oi Char. Each is a virtuoso celebration. Caroline Young is currently at work on her most ambitious project to date, the Immortal Twelve Suite. The paintings on silk will depict legends of the twelve signs of the eastern zodiac. This is a major project for the artist which will last for many years, and one which promises to cement Young’s place in the ranks of outstanding contemporary artists in America. Says writer Larry V. Ledoux about Caroline Young. "Her work is soft, serene and subtle. Superbly painted. Fascinating. Even compelling. They appeal to our sensitivity for beauty, to our love for a good story, to our curiosity about those who came before us, those who grew old in cultures older than our own".

Caroline Young’s growing national success is not surprising. Her works are collected all over the world, from England to Singapore, Hong Kong to Australia. She is also in the permanent collection of the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, and the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.  They can also be found in the Corporate Headquarters of Costco, IBM, United Airlines and Sunrider International.