Conversations with Jennifer Wang

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Wang.

Hi Jennifer, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I started painting in middle school, creating countless artworks during and after class, and my art teacher Mrs. Daskarolis encouraged me to apply to a specialized arts high school in NYC, where I spent four years learning all kinds of foundational art. However, since I was a first-generation college student and an immigrant kid, I decided to pursue my education at the University of Chicago rather than going to an art school for the sake of my family.

All throughout college, I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I never believed that it was an economically viable path for me to take, so I studied history and anthropology instead. But even in my studies, my extracurriculars, jobs and internships, I returned to art and visual culture over and over again, working at the campus art museum, teaching kids art, and so on.

I stumbled onto Laura Price’s Youtube channel in my senior year and watched her share her own experience transitioning from going to a regular college into her life as a working artist in the animation industry. After graduation, instead of pursuing graduate school, I decided to move to Los Angeles, where my parents had relocated to the year before, to study draftsmanship and painting from all the masterful artists that reside here.

My teachers from a class last summer, Angela Sung and Michelle Lin are professional artists in animation who had founded the Warrior Painters group, which had met up every weekend to paint en plein air, from life, all over Los Angeles, and which had moved onto Discord after the pandemic started. Finding that community of dedicated painters encouraged me to fully dive into my own painting practice, a practice built from a deep love of the world around me and the endless possibilities that color and light have to offer, from both nature and the city.

Grabbing my foldable chair, my paints, palette, brushes, and sketchbook and hiking to the park to paint became my way of connecting to life when the pandemic rendered my usual modes of connection inaccessible.

I am still constantly evolving as my learning journey continues, but I am so grateful for everything that has led me to where I am, and I am filled with joy that I get to be a painter. I’m also continuing art classes alongside my painting, and I’m aspiring to be a comics artist as well as a traditional painter and to make my own graphic novels someday soon.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In college, as I approached graduation and everyone around me embarked on the next stage of their lives, I definitely was afraid of heading down a path that was so different and so uncharted and leaving behind what I thought I would pursue, a career in academia, for my dream, which was to be a full-time artist.

In the first year that I started taking art classes after graduation, I felt really uncertain about my own capability. Art is so difficult to learn and to make, and sometimes it feels like I’ll never have enough time to learn all that I have to learn. But as the months went on, I could see my own improvement, and it encouraged me to keep going and to keep aiming higher.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a traditional painter! I paint primarily in gouache, which is an opaque watercolor paint that is water-soluble but can be applied thickly like oil. I paint from life and also based on reference in my studio — I see the two methods as complementary, as what I learn outdoors and in my own work space influence and strengthen each other.

I am most proud of the sunflowers and roses series I painted for Nucleus Portland’s Salut 6 coaster art show earlier this summer. Those eight paintings feel like an amalgamation of all that I have learned so far as a painter, and I loved painting each of them, making each coaster a distinct painting but also making each set of 4 coasters work together as a collection.

I am particularly drawn to clouds and flowers in my paintings, but I think what sets me apart is that I love to study and compose compelling color combinations regardless of the subject matter that I paint. It is ultimately the endless light and color variations in nature — depending on time of day, weather, location, geographical region, atmosphere, and elements of water or land or life — that I seek to capture in my paintings.

We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I always think about risk-taking as a ‘leap of faith’, like Miles Morales described in Into the Spiderverse. There’s so much that I can’t foresee about my own career, my future as an artist, a painter, and a storyteller, but I don’t want to live the rest of my life weighed down by the knowledge that I could have leapt and found out, no matter the outcome. And taking that leap has given me so much.

I don’t think I’ve taken any super major risks — I’m fortunate to have the support of my friends and family, and I’m pursuing my art education through alternate schools and platforms that are much more affordable and just as invigorating as expensive private art schools. I see the risks I have taken as seeds I’ve planted for the future — flowers I can’t see yet but that will surely blossom and make my life richer and more colorful.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferwang.arts/