Demi

Demi was born Charlotte Dumaresq Hunt in an extended family of important American artists and her early memories of her mother's studio, and the famous people who surrounded her theatre‚involved father, were a strong influence on her life.

She attended the Instituto Allende in Guanajuato, Mexico, and Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, then travelled to India on a Fullbright scholarship. From there she finally settled in New York where her career as an illustrator began.

Two strong influences sparked her interest in things Chinese -- a book by Wang Kai called The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, written in 1679, and her husband Tze‚si Jesse Huang, who shared the traditional stories of his youth with her. The influence of Chinese art flows into her work. She paints on silk and uses traditional ingredients in her paints, even adding powdered jade to the mix "for good fortune". She says, "Life is magic. Everything alive is magic. To capture life on paper is magic. To capture life on paper was the aim of Chinese painters. That is my aim, too."

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