Gender Identity impacts the way women cope with the co-presence of social, prevailing gender norms in cultural and social settings.
 
“Mother and Child” series in contemporary culture provides a stage for the pursuit of a more profound women-reflection and social communication, contributes to artistic interactions, blending mirror reflection, contemplative, iconic, and influential depictions of merging into today’s artistic and social cultures.  It re-examines and re-evaluates the time in the past, moving it toward a new generational era and context. Its creativity and artistic expression are to be reflective and valued in context as the “Mother and Child” series voice and impact current gender development.
 
Family identity, today, has become an inspirational, explorative, and intellectual effort, and dimensional thinking of combinations that portray a new ideological representation, exposing the symbolic, philosophical, ideological, and aesthetic forces that extend and reach beyond the boundaries of artistic expression.  It also reflects and demonstrates how changing circumstances and moving forward to a wider field for gender’s voice and family education within our society.
 
The “Mother and Child” series is an interactive and inspirational commitment to social growth and matrilineal family education that captures the sensibility and understanding of the human and artistic world at large. It illustrates the reshaping of emotional and psychological connections into a physical statement that redefines modernism and its visual language, using material in an interdisciplinary way. It embodies feminist strength and power, creative expression, critical thinking, and intellectual aesthetic.  The “Mother and Child” series is a natural driving force and expression for the world to connect response-ability to both the arts and the world communities. It encourages us to educate and to open ourselves with humility to the discovery and shape of our social and artistic values.     
 
“Mother and Child” series shares a new understanding of women’s identities and their role and importance in family, societal, cultural, and historical developments and influences, and the current time in which we live.   It challenges and endorses our boundaries and connections within the rich history of gender roles, family values, and influence in our global society. 
 

​As an artist, I value life and believe that it is best lived in the context of purpose.  I continue to pursue and develop an extensive focus that led to more stimulation and further challenge dedicated innovative conversation for exploration, critical thinking, mutually and experiential risk taking, investigating material malleability, breaking the limitations of artistic expression, and understanding material.  I never pause to extend a proactive motivation and vision by reaching out to possibilities of significance socially, culturally, ideologically reflective platform worldwide, to interact in a forward motion with intellectual and artistic restraints.

​Our invisible understanding as a vision is more important and goes beyond visible limitations; our artistic passion is to share with and to re-recognize our motivation and challenge.  Psychological understanding prepares our critical thinking and building processes for better execution of physical and experiential learning.  We never stay in the same moment in order to be open, reconnect, reconstruct, and step forward, breaking through the foundation of our own limitations without fear, always move forward, define and redefine our progressive artistic vision.
 
Mother and Child series challenge our limitations and break through traditional views; to examine our place in time and evaluate our aesthetic standards; to allow possibilities to overturn, modify and question our way of seeing and comprehending the contexts of connections that symbolize visual language. Its multi-layered and complex emerging aesthetic stimulates and awakens our cultural consciousness to the essence of feminism, shifting our notion of modernity and aesthetic modernism toward examined physicality, promotes cultural examination into family and social values, re-structuring women’s position in family, family education, and society.  It reinforces our sense of adaptability, vital to the essence of humanity. Its symbolic, universal vision and aesthetic value extend cultural implications into the future.
 
Mother and Child series break through our traditional artistic limitation, interconnects process and vision, aesthetics and concept, and language of expression to the material–clay, redefines “ceramics” and its old traditions, offering insight into contemporary, revolutionary, culturally, and progressive stages of modern and post-modern perspectives. It also reflects and demonstrates that how changing circumstances and moving forward to a wider field for gender’s voice and family education within our society.
 
Its non-stoppable notion of “time and impact” in our daily contacts, and how we move forward with our set of values, shaped, and influenced by matrilineal family education. Specifically, our growth, edges and limitations, our urges to create and to defy impossible possibilities, are all strengthened by women’s beliefs and a maternal drive to allow inspiration and love to slip into our lives and redefine our role in society, and around the globe, shape of our social, cultural, and artistic values.

Contemporary ceramics challenges our limitations and breaks through traditional views, promotes cultural examination almost without boarder without history. It examines our place in time and evaluates our aesthetic standards.  It re-exams and explores ideas that challenge new contexts and concepts in a contemporary language. Its multi-layered and complex emerging aesthetic stimulates and awakens our cultural consciousness, shifting our notion of modernity and aesthetic modernism toward examined physicality that enrich our understanding.
 
Today, contemporary ceramics questions our way of seeing and redefines “ceramics” and its old traditions into a new generation and context. We maybe is departing from our tradition but also to retain or reintroduce, the question is how our creativity and artistic expression to be reflective, to be valued in context, and to impact . The new concept of ceramics today is an inspirational, explorative and intellectual effort and interdisciplinary thinking of combinations to portrait in a new modern representation.

​A maternal bond is a complex tie between mother and child.  The bond is one of the strongest life connections in nature. My mother, Cheng Wah Kuo, shaped my artistic life through Western music training and Japanese flower arrangement-Ikebana. When she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and later departed this world in 2003, she had groomed her only son to become an artist. “Mother and Child” series, express the timelessness of maternal love and reveal the universal connection, dialogue and vision of my own relationship with my mother. It is an inspirational, explorative and intellectual effort to portrait in a new modern representation.
 
I have been engaging in a new dialogue and artistic growth of the “Mother and Child” series that reflect my motivation, vision and aspiration.  “Mother and Child” is to re-exam and explore abstract forms that challenge new contexts and concepts in a contemporary language. As I review my accumulated experiences of having Eastern heritage, while continuing learning and growing as a practicing artist in the United States, I realized that no conventional technique or use of material could visually express my relationship with my mother. Techniques come with limitations, such is the nature of our concrete world; consequently, I have learned to grow beyond such limitations and discover materials for my artistic expression that elevate my respect and deeper love for my mother.
 
Every material has adaptability, function, and untapped potential. Leaning on one’s life experience, full of challenges, an artist must remain true to oneself and explore its potential and honesty. In contemporary art, material is the concept, and the maternal love is the expression.  “Mother and Child” is a tangible representation of maternal love as a life’s experience that unifies purpose and adaptability.
 
“Mother and Child” recognizes natural elements in composition and emotion in maternal love. It overturns, modifies and questions our way of seeing and comprehending the visible and invisible connections that symbolizes contemporary and post-modern visual languages. It also exposes the symbolic, philosophical and aesthetic force that extends and reaches beyond the boundaries of artistic expression.
 

A mother’s relationship with her child is a phenomenon we are all familiar with, but how does one convey such a personal bond universally? How does one truly depict a bond that is strengthened by disagreements, joys, failures, and wise counseling? Ray Chen has answered such questions about this conventional understanding by beautiful, unconventional means with this piece from his Mother Series.

When Chen’s mother became diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease he began to reevaluate what he was doing with his art and began observing his relationship with his mother. This active observation influenced unique works of art such as this one. As he began to revisit his past, he was able to accumulate his experiences of having an Eastern heritage while learning and practicing art in the United States. Chen believes that those experiences have helped him become the artist he is today, but realized that no conventional technique or use of material could help express his relationship with his mother.

Many techniques have been taught to artist students with various materials presented by an instructor, but those come with limitations, as is the nature of many regulated things in life. So, Chen yearned to grow beyond such limitations in respect of his mother and began experimenting with porcelain. Expressing such a unique relationship between a mother and her child required Chen to dig deep and discover how to use and shape a material for this expression. 

“Every material has a limitation, but every material has an untapped potential,” states Chen. In contemporary art the material is the concept, and Chen has broke through the material’s limitations by finding it’s potential to accurately represent the maternal relationship between a mother and her child. Since the material is the concept and the concept is maternal love one could make the argument that this literally is maternal love and not just a mere representation of it.

Just as maternal love is, Mother and Child goes beyond the platonic understanding of this relationship through the various, physical aspects of the artwork. It isn’t a portrait conveying an instance of maternal love, nor is it a sculpted statue of his mother as a memorial. Mother and Child is the tangible representation of maternal love through its twists and turns, rough patches, size, and unity of message and pieces.