Michael Shum Solo Show
Michael 沈笑虎 Shum
is a Chinese-American who recently moved to Warrensburg Missouri but was born in Richmond Virginia and grew up primarily in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Michael earned his BFA at Millersville University in 2020 and his MFA at the University of Arkansas in 2025. Afterwards Michael was selected for two teaching fellowships at The University of Arkansas and Chautauqua Institute. He was also awarded the Windgate Accelerator Grant for the 26-27 year. He recently was hired at The University of Central Missouri as a visiting assistant professor. Michael is a passionate educator and artist who believes in emotive expression and visual communication.
Our Racecar, oil on canvases, 70x54”, 2026Dome Lights, oil on canvas, 56x54”, 2025Hotpot Gathering, oil on canvas with terracotta and birch supports, 54x70”, 2023Green Tea and Ginseng, oil on canvases, 68x50”, 2025
Detail - Chopsticks, oil on panel with porcelain teapot, 2025 Chopsticks, oil on panel with porcelain teapot, approx. 40x28”, 20253.5 Shrine, oil on canvases with hand carved peach wood swords and oak frames, approx. 72x72”, 2026LGM, oil on panel, 10x8.75”, 2026Connection, graphite on paper, 8x8”, 2025Rice Bowl, oil on panel, 12x12”, 2026Candle, oil on panel, 8.5x11”, 2026Star Figure, oil pastel and paint marker on clayboard, 5x5”, 2026Tangled, oil on canvas, 36x24”, 2026Untitled Still Life, oil pastel and paint marker on clayboard, 5x5”, 2026
Artist Interview
1. Your work often begins from moments in daily life that you give attention and care to. How do ordinary objects or experiences, such as a Lao Gan Ma jar, become meaningful subjects in your paintings? As I continue to grow, something I’ve learned in art and life is that nothing is in a vacuum, everything is in context. A singular object can share emotion or hint at lived experiences, in a way becoming intertwined with the humans who engage with it often. I am not aiming to describe an object like the Lao Gan Ma jar in a literal formal way, rather I aim for emotion or experience to be a distorting filter. I eat Lao Gan Ma almost every day. I have found being biracial to be confusing and hard to define, but food has always been a consistent way to create a more profound and personal connection to Chinese culture. So in a way these subjects are more an autobiographical statement from my lived experience. When speaking with my dad a few years ago he mentioned gaining cooking skills after immigrating and starting his own restaurants, he describes it as being for survival, although he mentioned my investment with Chinese cuisine feels more about love than survival. This makes me proud to hear. Things like that are embedded in the work, the context ignites the subject and creates something more dynamic than trying to isolate and see something through pure formal qualities.
2. You describe your visual language as invented, autobiographical, and symbolic, while also being grounded in observation. How do these different approaches meet in your studio practice? I often equate visual art to a language. I see observation now as a way to build up vocab and invention is collaging with those vocab scraps. If observation was a more professional language to me, personal symbolism felt like how I spoke with friends or loved ones at home, and that was the language/tone I wanted to choose and speak through to my audience.
In college my foundation for drawing/painting was observational ways of working. I became invested in looking and translating thoughtfully. At the time this was through plein-air landscape and still life but as I grew and changed so did this interest. It never went away rather just shifted. Instead of looking at something literally I am trying to investigate it with the same type of care but in a more emotive and amorphous way. This comes from changing my sources, in the past it was from life but now I observe intangibles. such as personal memory, emotions, and concepts which all stem from reality but visually are not reliant on it. I often work with personal symbolism, which comes from the repeated investment into a singular motif. I have found through repetition and investment the meaning of this motif can change which I find exciting.
My process now is being mindful through my daily life, sketching and making notes often of moments I intuitively feel need explored or considered more. Then I take these questions to the studio and give myself space to work through the idea. The work takes on an autobiographical lens through this process and relies on invention to solidify the end result into something representative but not specifically representational.
3. In your statement, you write that you “paint to understand.” What kinds of questions are you usually trying to work through when making a painting or drawing? I love the quote from Guston “ I paint what I want to see”. I feel it really adds insight to his work, he saw painting as a profound way to give body to thought. I wondered what my similar question would be and I landed on “I paint to understand”. I found the work that keeps me engaged is the work I cannot envision the end result of. So for me I bring questions into the studio as the start to a piece or series. The artworks themselves provide me space to try and seek answers but often I find more questions instead. Some of these questions have been:
"How do I make a work about care without just depicting it?”
“Can I make a work representing transitions and change while being static?”
“Can I make a portrait of someone without their likeness?”
I have found through this starting point I am less prone to just executing a plan but finding new insight as I work and think through the material in real time. I find uncertainty in my daily life to be disorienting but in art for me uncertainty is very welcomed.
4. Fantasy and imagination appear to play an important role in your work, especially when translating emotions such as being lost, watched, or searching for something. What does fantasy allow you to express that direct representation cannot? Often my work has been called “cartoony” and at one point I wasn’t as proud of that. Although through my research I have found the qualities of being cartoony are: being animated, provoking sensory stimulation, and being absurd but stemming from reality. My foundational aesthetics as a kid were cartoons and it took me a while to see how it manifests in my art. Many cartoons will have a real lesson buried under the silly antics. I love this idea that something can be two things and often this subversion is a powerful tool to deliver your message. The painting you are referencing is of a bunch of high fantasy nights in the woods at night looking off via torchlight as hastily painted demons surround. At the time my apartment building was sold and the new landlord increased rent by over 60% and actively kicked out my downstairs neighbors to convert their place into an Airbnb. I felt at the time like something dark was lurking and we were all on guard preparing for something that we couldn’t see quite yet. So that painting for me was as much about making a moody high fantasy scene as much as gentrification. Instead of just depicting it through reality, the viewer can now sense the emotion first versus the specifics of the story.
5. You have recently moved to Warrensburg, Missouri, after studying and teaching in several different places. Has this shift in location affected the way you think about your work, your surroundings, or your role as an artist? I believe so, I started teaching at a large R1 state flagship university and that has a pretty specific environment. I am excited for this upcoming visiting position at UCM to see as an educator how it will feel teaching in a different environment. With how I source, my subjects change and new experiences are inspiring. It both can unveil new interests as well as solidify previous ones. I feel inspired and excited to keep up the momentum and teach in many different places with many different colleagues. I feel my work is going through a shift from more external to internal, taking on a slightly quieter tone and speaking a bit more nuanced. I think this life shift is provoking this from me but I can’t quite name why yet, although as you know I appreciate a curiosity/question haha!
6. As an artist who values emotive expression and visual communication, what do you hope viewers can sense or encounter in your work before they try to interpret it? I hope viewers feel spoken with versus talked at with my work. Mainly, I aim for viewers to see the humanity first. I want it to be very obvious this was made from human hands and comes from genuine human expression and emotions. I feel nowadays there is a huge push in many different industries to optimize and clarify. In the era of generative AI I am very proud of my faults, or the things that make me human. At one point my work was more concerned with representing my technical skills but now I really just want the work to become more idiosyncratic and true to me. Essentially I want the work to self-actualize and hope the viewer can see and hear a specific voice even if they lack all the needed vocab to literally translate.