Nicholas Shi: Merging Cultures and Colors in Modern Art

By: Michelle Calderon 🇸🇻

Nicolas Shi works on his most recent unfinished painting in his studio in Washington, D.C. on Oct.27, 2024. To his left is the winning painting submitted for the 2024 Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. 

Nicholas Shi, the award-winning Salvadoran artist known for using bold colors and creating illusions of depth in his artwork, always knew he was destined to work in a creative field.

Shi was born in El Salvador to Chinese immigrant parents and had his artistic talents noticed at an early age. He would draw out lesson plans to help him understand subjects better instead of just taking notes, and his teachers would admire his drawings.

 “I always noticed I had talent drawing as a young kid. In school I would be asked to do all the posters for the class. I remember my notebooks in school. They were really nice to the point that the teachers were amazed. In classes like anatomy I would have really pretty drawings of the digestive system, the circulatory system. I would see it on a book and copy it. All my relatives and the older people would say you have some artistic talent.” Shi said. 

While Shi aspired to study an artistic subject in college, his father felt it would be better to pursue a science or technology subject. 

“My father didn’t think that was a real profession. My father thought I should go into something with math or physics. He read a lot, and he knew about computers. He said, “Don’t you want to study something about those computers?” I said, “I want to do something creative.” Eventually, Shi and his father compromised, and he ended up studying architecture. 

Shi first attended the “Universidad Nacional de El Salvador” but fled the country once the Salvadoran Civil War began. He completed his studies at Oklahoma State University, where he graduated with a Bachelor's in Architecture and later got his master's in Architectural Engineering. 

Shi said that while he enjoyed practicing architecture and engineering, his heart always craved art. “Eventually I burned out. I needed something more creative,” Shi said. He said he did freelance work in DC, such as graphic design, designing newsletters, and invitations and posters for DC organizations. He started his artistic career with his bold colors and drawings that create illusions with a painting of his grandson. 

Nicolas Shi stands next to his winning painting (on his left) for the 2024 Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. On his right is the most recent project he is working on in his studio located in Washington D.C.

“I took a picture of my grandson. I looked at the picture and said let me see if I can do a painting. That was my first painting, I did in my style. The painting looked like it was popping out of the camera. It looked like a ghost.” Shi said. 

A lot of Shi’s art is inspired by his experience as an immigrant in the United States and his identity as a Chinese Salvadoran in El Salvador. He also draws a lot of his inspiration from indigenous Latino and Asian cultures. 

“One collection that I really enjoyed working on was one that in a way I was experimenting with the mixture of all these cultures being Chinese Salvadoran. I have some fabrics that I bought in Guatemala. One time, I had a Thai friend that came to visit, and he looked and said, “Oh I see you have some Thai fabric,” and I said, “No, they’re from Guatemala. He said we have the same patterns, but then he looked at it and touched it and said it’s not Thai because in Thailand, it would be made out of silk, and this is made out of cotton.” Shi said. 

That experience showed Shi how a lot of native Asian cultures and Indigenous Latino cultures have very similar customs and traditions. 

Shi learned that in some Indigenous Asian cultures, people from different tribes identify each other by their clothing, including the colors and patterns they wear. Similarly, in Indigenous cultures in Latin America, certain towns have distinct patterns, and people also recognize one another by the colors and patterns they wear. 

“A lot of the Asian native groups and the Latin American native groups have the same idea and the same fabric, the designs are almost identical. I did a whole series of native paintings of native people from China, Thailand, and Guatemala, the Incas and I really enjoyed that.” Shi said. Shi enjoyed exploring the strong connection between these two groups, the idea that through art forms, tribes can recognize and identify each other, and he called this series of paintings, “Identidades Entrelazadas - Woven Identities.” 

A lot of Shi’s artistic inspiration comes from his experiences growing up as a child of Chinese immigrants in El Salvador. He said that while his family owned a restaurant in El Salvador called, “China Palace,” that employed many Salvadorans, most of his friends and friends of his family were other Chinese immigrants and he often felt isolated from Salvadorans.

Shi was able to express these feelings of isolation and being an outsider at an art show in El Salvador. “I had a solo show in El Salvador. To me that was very special because a lot of people don’t consider me Salvadorian, especially Salvadorans, because I look Chinese. I always felt that I wasn’t really accepted.  They would always look at us as foreigners.” Shi said. 

The collection showed his father’s experience as an immigrant and Shi’s feelings of being an outsider. The collection was called, “Huespedes de Galopantes: A Chinese Family Odyssey,” and was displayed at the, “Museo de Arte de El Salvador,” from February-March 2020. 

One of Shi’s proudest career moments as an artist was being selected as the 2024 Official Artist of the Cherry Blossom Festival. Per the ABC News Article, Shi’s collection featured artwork called “Fleeting Beauty,” including images of cherry blossoms against some of DC’s most notable sights like the Washington monuments and the Tidal Basin. 

Nicolas Shi works on his most recent unfinished painting in his studio in Washington, D.C. Shi exclusively does commission work at the moment.

“It’s such a great honor, especially being from DC, and if I’m not wrong, I’m the first one that’s actually a DC artist.” Shi said. He still feels the excitement of being selected and expressed that the experience was beyond enjoyable. “It was unbelievable. I'm still on a high from that. It was a lot of fun too. I was able to participate in a lot of stuff they were doing. They would invite me to everything.” Shi said. 

One of the most memorable parts for Shi was getting to work on a float and meeting Martha Wash.

“They asked, “Do you wanna build the float?” and I said, “Of Course.” They also had a singer and I used to dance to one of her songs when I was going to the clubs in the 80s, her name is Martha Wash, so she was on my float, I'm next to her dancing, it was a lot of fun.” Shi said. 

Shi’s artwork is displayed at the Smithsonian Museum of Art and the University of Maryland’s Adele H. Stamp Student Union. To learn more about Shi’s work and accomplishments you may visit his official website at, Nicholasfshi.com