Mengru Zhou

PAINTER

Based in Houston,TX, b.1995

Ru (Mengru) Zhou, born in Anhui, China, began her formal art training in painting and traditional Chinese art at a young age. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from China, exploring diverse visual mediums such as illustration, printmaking, Chinese painting, and digital art. In 2017, Zhou pursued a second baccalaureate degree in Art in the United States, earning her degree from Central Michigan University. In 2023, Zhou completed her MFA at Syracuse University, where she distinguished herself as the first candidate to achieve an all-A record and finish the program in two years.

Now based in Houston, Zhou is a full-time artist focused on painting, often drawing on personal reflections of human nature and society in her work.

SHOP

ARTWORKS

  • PLAYGROUND II

    Oil on Canvas, 48x36 inches, 2023

  • Mengru Zhou's work is informed by a confluence of traditional cultural influences, personal narratives, and the complexities of a multicultural environment. Through her artistic practice, she reveals an underlying sense of insecurity, where the ambiguous nature of modern humanity and existence is both magnified and materialized. Her ongoing inquiry into the interiority of human nature seeks to unearth deeper truths about existence.

  • THE CRYING

    Oil on Canvas, 48x36 inches , 2022

  • COMPLEX WORLD II

    Oil on Canvas, 30x24 inches, 2021

  • PLAYGROUND I

    Oil on Canvas, 18x24 inches, 2022

  • As a feminist artist, Zhou employs representations of the female form to investigate the dynamic between the individual and society. Although her paintings are ostensibly figurative and realist, they are imbued with profound contemplation of human complexity and the values of contemporary spiritual life. She regularly engages with themes of contemporaneity and traditional media, female identity and universal human experience, as well as internal desires.

  • COMPLEX WORLD I

    Oil on Canvas, 30x40 inches, 2021
Collaboration