Artwork copyright Lucy Liu. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Back Yard, 1994

Lucy Liu
American (born 1926)

Location: Northeast Tacoma Elementary, Tacoma

About the Artwork

Back Yard is part of artist Lucy Liu's body of paintings composed using traditional Chinese ink-painting techniques. This piece depicts several birds playing under the graceful sweep of a weeping willow branch, a happy scene the artist often observed in her garden.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Tacoma Public Schools.

About the Artist

Pacific Northwest artist Lucy Liu creates traditional Chinese brush paintings and calligraphic works.
Lucy Liu grew up in northeastern China, where she learned artistic calligraphy as a child. After 1949 she lived in Taiwan, where she studied traditional Chinese landscape and bird and flowers painting. Working as a researcher for an American expert on Chinese folklore brought her to Berkeley, California in 1973. Liu earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Arts degree in art education from Eastern Washington University in Cheney. She taught art at Seattle-area community colleges. In 1983, she founded the Northwest Chinese Art Society to promote Asian art in the U.S.
In 1989, Lucy Liu was honored with a Washington State Governor's Heritage Award as a "Washington State Living Treasure" for her work as an artist, an art teacher, and a promoter of Chinese art, both within and outside of the Chinese-American community.