Mina Hsing is a Chinese-American artist who lives in Evanston, Illinois. She was born in Shanghai and, as a child in China, she studied classical Chinese brush painting. When she was nineteen, her parents relocated to Brazil, and she went with them. A year after that she struck out on her own and went to New York City. She later studied art at the University of California and then got her master's degree from Mundelein College in Chicago. It was in Chicago that she met and married her husband, Peter. She wasn't always an artist. She explains, I worked for three years as a computer programmer, and then my children were born, so I didn't work. She describes how she began her art career. In the United States I was keeping up my artwork all the time. I didn't have to work. My husband worked for IBM, so there was the opportunity for me to do my artwork. So my children grew up, and opened three galleries. Then, fifteen years later, my husband passed away. Then I started seriously to pursue my own art career. That was in 2003. I started to see other people's work and learning what works in the market. Sometimes you paint for yourself, sometimes you paint for the market. So I do very diverse work. I do contemporary art and traditional Chinese painting.. I've been living in the West for a long time, but my native voice is Chinese. I can't separate both. That is in my personality. In 2008, Mina Hsing was teaching in a Chinese school once a week, giving students a brief introduction to brush painting. I also go to different areas and give one-day workshops. Briefly, it's how to hold a brush, how to use a brush, and what can you do with a brush. It's the magic of the brush.