San Francisco, California: The Paul Thiebaud Gallery is pleased to present a new body of work by Suong Yangchareon from February 28 through April 15. Suong Yangchareon: Recent Paintings features his realist paintings that capture an ephemeral stillness of the urban landscape of the Los Angeles area—the artist’s hometown for over thirty years—or of areas that the artist has visited on recent trips, such as Idaho, Arizona, and New Mexico.

To begin a painting, the artist extrapolates from photographs shot during early hours of the day when most are sleeping or slowly shaking off the weight of slumber. He seeks out places that appeal to him viscerally and uses these scenes to create compositions largely focused on the stark forms of urban areas and the natural landscapes surrounding them. His acrylic on canvas paintings are usually devoid of figures given the times of day that he prefers to observe the sites.

As an art student in Bangkok, the Thai artist felt out of place in an environment that sought inspiration mainly from the Italian Renaissance. Countering their emphasis of looking toward that period, Yangchareon was heavily drawn to the work of Edward Hopper and the California painters, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. His longing for their type of art and influence led him to move to the United States from Thailand in the 1970s.

The influence of Diebenkorn and Thiebaud can be detected in the artist’s sense of color and in his interpretation of light, from sun-drenched sidewalks to the delicate interplay of light and shadow against a building facade. Reminiscent of Hopper, a sense of the melancholy pervades his compositions in a quiet, detached manner.

Public Reception—Tuesday, February 28, from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm; open to the public.