Gwen Wong

Abode

2025

Gwen Wong's work is both painterly and allegorical, caught somewhere in the middle between the representational painter and the narrator. "I am inspired by the idea of a childhood re...

Gwen Wong's work is both painterly and allegorical, caught somewhere in the middle between the representational painter and the narrator. "I am inspired by the idea of a childhood re...

14" x 11" Unframed Mixed Media on Paper Hand Signed by Rachel Isadora

NORA SEE grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where, as a child, she taught herself to draw. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans. She works and lives in New Orleans. In her oil paintings, Nora See renders framed paintings on walls with which human figures interact. Through her classical painting style and the use of historical visual references, her pieces contrast the past with the present. By combining these temporal elements with the use of frames as containers, she explores themes of consumption, imprisonment, and liberation. Nora’s work has been exhibited in a variety of venues and is also in the personal collection of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. The artist says of her work... “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” A quote oft attributed to various sources that was never actually uttered by any of them. Though Mark Twain elaborated on the sentiment: “Ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms.” In the Framed Series, I use my 1% contribution to combine issues of consumption with my autobiography. I paint copies of copies of paintings within paintings to reference the appropriation, commodification, and altered continuum of art. My paintings of paintings are based on photographs of originals to perpetuate the continual distillation of form, given the ease with which images are presently exchanged and modified. Further, by reducing historically significant paintings to framed objects...