Jove Wang Featured in Plein Air Magazine Summer 2011 Issue
Spontaneous Responses to Well Known Locations
We all have our favorite places in the world, but can artists show them to us in new ways? During a recent painting trip to Europe, Jove Wang challenged himself to find unique emotional responses to familiar locations.
Stroll along the Seine in Paris, the Grand Canal in Venice, or below the Swiss Alps, and you’re bound to find artists by their easels, painting in the same locations where Whistler, Monet, Sargent, Moran, and dozens of other masters created their most famous pictures in the 19th and 20th centuries. The question one wants to ask these contemporary artists is: How can you possibly find your own fresh response to such familiar subjects? The answer you’d receive from Californian Jove Wang is at once simple and profound. “I carefully select locations that have the elements I need to make a strong picture, and then I let my first feelings about the places lead my work,” he explains. “In the end, the paintings are not about the buildings, land formation, water, or sky in the scene, but rather, they are attempts to capture the soul of the place and the context of everything in it.”
