5 minute read
ZEN WANG
Golden Eagle, oil.
Peace and creativity through art
by Margaret Tessman
Zen Wang is an artist trained in classical Chinese brush painting and a first-generation immigrant to Canada. His curiosity has led him to explore various forms of artistic expression including oil painting, graphic arts, sculpture and even chainsaw carving. “I want to tell stories through my art,” he says. Wang works mostly from his home studio in Bonnington, a small community snugged into the mountains between Nelson and Castlegar. How he came to nest there is a story of perseverance, creative growth and a promise kept.
Wang and his family left China as refugees in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Their home city of Wuhan had become an important international port in the early 20th century, when European colonialism opened China to foreign markets. Prior to the creation of People’s Republic of China in 1949, Wang’s grandfather worked as a sculptor. Some of the Italian marble carvings he made for the tombstones of westerners who died while in China are still standing.
As a good Chinese son, Wang felt pressure to pursue a traditional career. He finished a degree in mechanical engineering and worked for years as a nuclear engineer in Ontario. But art was his first love and passion. In fact, it was part of his DNA. “I didn’t want to let my skills and talents go to waste,” he says. “And I wanted to honour my grandfather.”
The compromise that Wang came up with was inspired: He made a promise to his grandfather’s spirit that he would produce one piece of art a week. “It didn’t have to be a masterpiece; it could just be a sketch.” After straddling the two fields for a time, Wang worked up the courage to quit engineering and move to B.C. to attend the Vancouver Film School. “My boss thought I was out of my mind. He said, ‘Think about it and we’ll take the next step.’ I thought about it and moved across the country.”
Wang graduated as his class valedictorian in 2012 after a near-disaster. His backpack was stolen while shooting in East Vancouver, along with the only copy of his graduate short film, which was stored on a flash drive. “I thought, ‘Should I reshoot or call it quits?’” With the support of his classmates and $5,000 raised online, Wang reshot everything in two weeks. “I learned that you don’t let anything stand in your way,” he says. “Engineering has given me the ability to focus on tasks. That part of my brain is important in my art.”
Wang also learned that “Hollywood North is actually in Toronto.” He moved back to Ontario in 2015 and worked himself up to the position of art director for film and television until COVID shut down the industry. “I needed to pivot,” he says. “We had a three-year-old child at the time, and we decided we wanted to raise her in B.C.” He had heard about Nelson from a friend and after looking up the whereabouts of the city on a map, Wang and his partner sold their house, went on a road trip and bought a house in Nelson within a month. “We were meant to be here. The universal intelligence was at work.”
Working remotely meant that digital art became a new direction for Wang out of necessity. “When you are working for film, you need to create images quickly. Using a digital stylus means a fast turnaround and the ability to customize work for clients,” he says. Although digitization opened up a whole new world of commissions for television and film for him, Wang feels that AI has done a lot of damage to the industry. “Less manpower is needed. Once, it took seven people to produce a television episode; now it’s down to three. Those three could even be kids who know how to communicate with AI but the result is not necessarily high quality. It’s disheartening for me. I want to evolve to a place where I feel more fulfilled.”
That desire for evolution is taking many forms. Wang is currently collaborating on a graphic novel project with a local writer. The book has the working title Deep and will be illustrated with largely digital images with pen-and-ink details. The story follows a young boy on a hero’s journey of self-discovery as he grows up and explores different aspects of love. For the past three years, Wang has participated in Castlegar Sculpturewalk and he opened his studio for the Columbia Basin Culture Tour in 2021. He began teaching Zoom classes in calligraphy and Chinese art and cooking to a Learning in Retirement seniors’ group through Selkirk College in Nelson, and now teaches the popular courses in person. He is a lion dancer, one of a team of five that has performed at local schools “with a bathtub-size drum. I see my role as a bridge between cultures,” he says. Oh, and he is a certified volunteer firefighter.
Wang says that his mission statement is “To reclaim peace and creativity through art.” It seems that his engineer’s brain, artistic talent and innate curiosity are meshing to take him down paths that would make his grandfather proud.
zenartstudio.ca
