I’ve been searching around the web for things that I can show you, so you can better understand the various things that inspire and influence my paintings. I have quite a few more influences that contribute towards my product and process. However, the examples I have listed below are the ones that seem to resonate through my creative journey. I have never tried to unify them into any one piece. However, I would like to take the challenge and try to present all or most of these ideas into one painting.

The Rice Bowl Journals
http://www.ricebowljournals.com
Beatrhymesnlife
http://www.beatsrhymesnlife.com/home.htm
Rice Bowl Journals and Beatrhymsnlife are the celebration of the "Asian Experience" through online journaling and exists as a tribute to the wealth of Asian Culture and its diversity. Although my art represents more than the “cyber” world, these websites are microcosms of what the entire Asian community is about. These websites as well as many Asian communities in the world accepts some if not most of the stereotypes that have been given to them. However, they also invite the outsider to look a little deeper, so they can discover that we are not only different, but we are also alike. We have souls that embody multiple similar human emotions, experiences and relationships. When it comes to the subject of who I am in western society, I quietly speak in this manner, and I would like my art to speak in the same way. As much as I am proud of my culture and heritage, and as much as I am aware of how other cultures view me because of how I look, I also tend to seek similarities between myself and others. I seek for these similarities by showing them the various elements of my being.

Old Shanghai Posters
http://www.tianantiques.com/history.html
These posters show Asian/Chinese females in a strictly decorative way. The fact that these posters were more westernized, invites the western world to appreciate things that are Asian, including the women. I would like to use the same premise as I invite people to look at my paintings. From a far or at quick glance, I want my paintings to look as if they are superficial or decorative. However, I do feel like western society is getting “short changed” if they are only able to appreciate Asians and the Asian culture in a decorative way. Because of this, I would like to include certain symbols and images, with these “decorative” portraits, that shows how I understand and appreciate them. The sampling will hopefully create a soul that fills the empty shell that western society has created to represent the Asian female and culture. I intend to include images that are traditional as well as universal. Hopefully the universal themes will act as a bridge between the Asian Female and non-Asian soul.

Contemporary Chinese Portraits (especially ZHANG Da Zhong)
http://www.connoisseur-art.com/html/artist_portrait.html
I think these are the present versions of the Old Shanghai Posters. I’d like some of my portraits to be as close to these as possible.

Ken Chu and Michael Joo
(Re)sexualizing the Desexualized Asian Male
http://www.modelminority.com/printout145.html
Because I am a man, I feel that I only have some sort of provisional license in-terms of speaking for the Asian Female. After all, I only know part of their experience, and even that part is taken from the paradigm of a male. So what I would also like to do is paint Asian Males in the way that the Contemporary Chinese Portraits have been painted. I would like to show them as decorative and more sexually charged. As Ken Chu and Michael Joo have observed and presented, the Asian male minority seeks a sexual voice. My Asian Male friends and I always joke around about how we are still waiting for the second coming of Bruce Lee who is probably the only sex symbol type celebrity that the world has accepted. I would like to help find that voice again so that we are (re)sexualized in the eyes of the world and more specifically the western society. Although the attempt seems superficial, it comes from a very deep part of the Asian Male psyche. Through my Asian Male paintings, I would like to especially show sexuality as part of the multiple dimensions of the Asian Male.

Wu Meng Chun
http://www.wumengchun.com/index.html
Wu Meng Chun shows the Asian Male in a very sexually charged way. I like that he shows his figures in the nude and in this sexual manner. However, I would like to show my males as less fragile. I have seen more than enough athletic and physically built Asians to know that a portrait of a less fragile Asian male is not so farfetched. The fragile Asian male is now more than ever a misconception that I would like to disenchant.

Zhong Biao
http://www.zhongbiaoart.com/
Zhong Biao’s art is probably the closest to what I want mine to represent. In a few of his paintings, he seems to de-foreignize Asians by putting them in contemporary cosmopolitan settings. This shows the Asian experience as a present experience and as a part of everyone else’s world. At the same time he collages his contemporary images with that of traditional ones. I think that he does something through his paintings that even the mostly artifact based San Francisco Asian Art Museum has not been able to do.

Pre-Pop and Bay Area Figurative Painters
My all time favorite artists are Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud.
I enjoy the feeling of their work tremendously. I find comfort in Hopper’s use of landscape to formally present solitude. I thoroughly enjoy Diebenkorn’s way of bridging representational and abstract art. And I love how Thiebaud uses everyday delights such as ice cream and cakes to invite people into his world. I have a feeling that I am slowly outgrowing my desire to emulate the look of my idols. However, I hope and believe that I will always try to emulate the feel of their work.

Contemporary Abstract Art
Jaime Brunson and Jennifer Bain
There are a few more abstract artists who’s paintings I enjoy, buy Jaime's and Jennifer’s are fresh in my mind at the moment. I especially enjoy abstract work that convey a spiritual and calm quality. I would like to use their formal qualities as the unifying base for the feeling that I will place in my paintings. Much like Jaime's and Jennifer Bain’s paintings, I would like to show a mood of serenity and non-confrontation. However, I would like to try to present this mood in a more masculine way. I intend to do this with more texture, visible layers and traditionally masculine colors.

Graphic Novels
Alex Ross
http://www.alexrossart.com/archives.html
The Graphic Novel is my childhood sweetheart. From a far, I would like my paintings to resemble a big page from a graphic novel. Alex Ross as well as other artists of his kind are very successful in unifying multiple images on a page. I would like borrow from his work in trying to achieve my similar goal.

Anime and Manga
http://www.robotech.com
http://users.animanga.com/voltesv/
Anime and Manga seem to be one of the more common bridges that brings the western world into the east. I’d like to acknowledge this in my paintings. My childhood favorites are the robot cartoons.

Western Romance and Hong Kong Action Movies
Love Actually
http://www.loveactually.com/
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
http://www.sonypictures.com/cthv/crouchingtiger/flash4.htm
Movies are a common interest that bridges many people from different walks of life. Whenever I seek for rapport between myself and another, movies are usually my most used tool. I’m not really sure how this will affect my product but I know that it does. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon achieves the overall goal that I would like to achieve with my paintings. He engages the western world into the Asian experience without sacrificing it’s authenticity.

The Filipino Masters
http://www.lopezmuseum.org.ph/gallery.html
As a first generation Filipino living in a foreign land (America) in which I try to belong, I tend to lose my spiritual and cultural identity. I often look for mentorship, kinship and acceptance in the western world. Through this search and creative wandering, I always find myself fearful that I will get detached from my artistic anchor. This artistic anchor is the Filipino Masters. Much like me, they have been influenced by various western artists. They have taken different genres and used them to represent the Filipino landscape and experience.

Creating a product that embody all these different ideas seem very ambitious to me. I guess this is why I have shyed away from the challenge for so long. But I think this is the logical road my work needs to now embark on. These thoughts have been lingering around my mind for so long, I think it’s time to finally contain them and funnel them into one painting. I hope to finally bridge and collage the various facets of my aesthetic preferences, as well as bridge the western world’s views of Asians, Asian’s views of themselves and my own self perception.