"Souvenir de Venise" Painting

Minh Ngà Dang Vu (b. 1977 in Saigon, Vietnam) is an artist based in Miami Beach, who primarily works with acrylic paintings on canvas. Raised by a French couple from the age of 7, while maintaining contact with her biological family, she embraced the name 'Minia' to accommodate her adoptive parents' difficulty pronouncing her birth name. Exposed to both Catholic and Buddhist teachings, Minia's early upbringing in diverse cultural traditions and belief systems laid the foundation for her artistic development. Growing up in the culturally rich city of Paris, she pursued studies in art history and photography. She found inspiration in art movements spanning from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism, shaping her own unique vision and style. Most of her past collections were produced while living in San Francisco, Paris, and during her travels to India. She has been based in Miami Beach since 2020. She strives to paint the transformative energies and alchemy that occur through physical-emotional healing as we grow in consciousness. Her work often refers to the magnificent beauty and life force of Nature, the Five Elements, Mysticism, Love, Hope, exploring the liberation from human conditioning to discover new ways of breathing into existence. Minia's intuitive process involves multiple layers of paint, allowing her inner guidance, or “the otherness”, to dictate color choices, brush stroke rhythms, and overall composition, until a feeling of internal balance and harmony is reached. These layers build upon each other, similar to the cumulative, energetically charged experiences and constant shifting states of mind. Her attempt to paint energies in motion translates the vibrancy of life's impermanence, often leaving the viewer in a meditative garden of new perceptions.