Jenny Wang

Where do you live: Vancouver, Canada
Your education: UBC Sauder School of Business (Vancouver), Bachelor of Commerce degree
Describe your art in three words: Innovative, Layered, Empowering
Your discipline: Oil Painting, Acrylic, Photography
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You started your artistic journey at a very young age. Can you tell us more about how your early experiences shaped your current art practice?

Art has been my closest companion since childhood. In the early years, my focus was on exploring different techniques and understanding the basics. As I’ve grown, sketching, painting, and photography have become powerful tools for expressing my emotions and inner world.

I’m grateful for the strong foundation built during those early lessons, which shaped my approach to both painting and photography. Experimenting with sketching and mixed media at a young age taught me to see art as a conversation between imagination and material.

Those formative experiences sparked a deep curiosity for visual storytelling—something that continues to drive my multidisciplinary practice today. 

I cherish the freedom I had as a 4-year-old, creating without rules or expectations. Looking back, I realize that this unfiltered, instinctive creativity is one of the most beautiful and precious aspects of making art.

Your project statement emphasizes art’s potential to bring people together and spark meaningful change. Can you share how you incorporate these ideals into your artwork?

My goal is to integrate community voices directly into my work. I believe that art can be a powerful tool for addressing social issues, raising awareness, sparking conversations, and inspiring action by challenging societal norms and giving voice to marginalized groups.

Jenny Wang | Childhood Vacation | 2012

Could you walk us through your creative process? How do you approach a new piece, whether it’s a painting, a photograph, or a  model shoot?

Inspiration often comes to me unexpectedly. I’ve learned to quickly capture these moments of insight and jotting them down on paper or in my sketchbook before they slip away. From there, I begin to draw out my thoughts and inspirations.

With a background in Business and HCI, how do you think these fields influence your artistic vision, especially in terms of communication and interaction?

As learning and understanding more about HCI, it has opened my eyes to the interactive possibilities of art. It has taught me to think about the viewer not as a passive observer, but as an active participant or  even co-creators of artwork.

Through this perspective, art becomes a dialogue rather than a monologue.

My background in Business and HCI has deeply enriched my artistic vision by encouraging me to think critically about how people engage with visuals, narratives, and experiences.

Jenny Wang | Blooming Dream | 2021

Photography seems to play an important role in your practice. How do you see photography complementing or enhancing your other art forms, like painting or modeling?

Photography plays a vital role in my creative process—it serves as a bridge between the fleeting and the timeless. Before discovering photography, I was deeply rooted in sketching and painting. This fine art background gave me a strong foundation, allowing me to approach photography with a trained eye and an intuitive sense of composition.

I’ve found that skills in photography and modeling often enhance or complete one another. Experienced photographers tend to understand form and gesture, just as skilled models are attuned to visual storytelling and framing.

When I’m painting or working with modeling materials, I often draw inspiration from the textures, lighting, and compositions I observe through the camera lens.

With my own eyes, I find quiet moments of beauty in the mundane. Through photography, I preserve these fragments and invite others to feel how I observe the world — to connect with the emotion embedded in the ordinary.