Artist Statement
Rent from DeepDyve- Artist Statement
My art reflects the feelings and thoughts of the people who have experienced vicissitudes in life; those who are pushed to the edge of death during war time; those who suffer through difficult living conditions while escaping communism to seek freedom, and those who struggle to assimilate in a new country.
In the art pieces It’s a Long Way to Run and Isolation, I put myself in the shoes of a mother and express her torment in war. By showing different snapshots of her life during a time of crisis, I hope to capture the many layers of maternal emotion that accompany the heartbreak of separation and unyielding worry for her family’s safety.
I continue the theme of motherhood in my shift to the environment. Just as we are born from our mothers we, as humans, are born from this earth. We live off of the fruits of mother earth and yet we do not give back to her. Trash litters the world and if we do not come together on this, then mother earth will have nothing left to give. Found objects are part of my new approach in my artwork to create a statement. Slowly, my work transforms from a flat 2d surface to a 3d relief form. I live in the county of Los Angeles, and the symbol of Angel, the cover image for this journal, is used to portray my statement here. [End Page 211]
ann phong received her mfa in painting from California State University, Fullerton, in 1995 and has actively participated in more than eighty solo and group shows in galleries and museums; her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Jose, Houston, Vancouver, Thailand, Korea, and Japan. Ann currently teaches art at California State University, Pomona. Besides working as a professional artist, she also serves as the president of the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association, a nonprofit organization to promote Vietnamese American artists who live outside Vietnam. She has been invited to speak at many high schools, colleges, universities, galleries, and museums on the subject of her own work and the work of other Vietnamese American artists. She can be reached at annphong@cpp.edu.
