Art runs in Wo’s blood. She is a third-generation female Northern California artist. Her son is a fourth-generation artist, he makes artwork in the digital space. In addition to supporting her son’s artist career, Wo is in favor of, more generally, bridging the gap between the visual and digital art worlds. Her life is and always has been surrounded by creation and creativity.
Wo is a sea spirit. She captures ocean beauty in wildest elemental forms. Her paintings are inspired by love for ocean exploration in the polar areas. Wo's artwork feels urgent, like we are living in times past the point of no return, heading into a climate catastrophe. Her focus is on water elements and dramatic sea landscapes. Wo's seascapes are elemental and mesmerizing. Melting wax creates an illusion of abstract photography. Wo shows us dominating water and punishing coastal formations. She plays with her details like Bob Ross. Her paintings capture water with its mass, movement, reflections, transparency and colors, with deep blue hues and angry white foams.
Wo is an expert in material. She is formally trained in ink, oil painting and encaustic, a traditional technique that involves putting color pigments into extremely hot, melted, bee wax. She is highly skilled at the encaustic method and sometimes adds small amounts of melted purified damar resin to these works. Most of her portfolio is oil. For many years, Wo has been painting using the earliest traditional methods of oil painting, including with Mineral Salts and alternatives and mixing her own paint. It is easy to see Wo’s material expertise coming through her work. Importantly, Wo also uses material as a tool for creative inspiration. By using the same materials as the old masters, preparing to paint exactly as they did, she feels a visceral connection to these artists and to their time period, the birth of art as we know it.
Recently, Wo has been working with casein. Yes, as in casein-free milk! She is experimenting with an unpopular method in oil painting where casein is used in the priming substance that’s applied prior to the oil paints.
