2. LUCONG aka. Cong Hua Lu

Contemporary American Portrait Artist LUCONG aka. Cong Hua Lu

LUCONG about himself:

I was born on February 22nd, 1978, in Shanghai, China, to Joy Wang and Yade Lu. It was near the end of a very different era. I remember growing up with all the amenities that a Mid-20th Century Socialist utopia provides; long lines, home-made fashion, patriotic songs, and most of all, an atmosphere strangely devoid of culture. My early life was comfortable considering the circumstance, for I was the only child in a large and well-to-do family. I was a content boy, yet a gentle shade of sadness often lingered over me. I spent countless hours daydreaming, drawing, and scrounging for bits and pieces of civilizations past and foreign. My busy imagination would cobble together endless stories and images. What I craved for I cannot say; it always escapes me, evaporating into air like smoke before my eyes.

1989 was the year that my world changed. In October of that year, my mother and I immigrated to the US to join my father in Muscatine, Iowa. I happily embraced my new life, and America warmly embraced me back. I look to my adolescent years in Iowa as fondly as anyone lucky enough to have grown up in the idyllic Mid-West. During those years I drew fervently, for it was my most articulate voice, and I am grateful for the friendship and admirations it brought me. I drew mostly people; portraits have a spell over me, they speak to me in ways that I cannot recount, they bring me closer to fullfilling that indescribable craving. The good people of Muscatine were gracious. I was asked to paint the town’s grocery store windows at Christmas, and the local VFW commissioned me to paint a proud eagle on their wall. Art, however, was not to be considered a career. My parents were both brilliant scientists, and we all expected the same path for me.

In 2000 I graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Biology. I earned enough drawing and art history credits to receive a BA in Art as well. That the same year I moved to Denver in an effort to delay entry to medical school. There I experienced an entirely different dimension of American life, and along with it glimpses of a destiny that I have always refused to believe to be my own. I rented a small studio on Capital Hill and began to teach myself to paint in oils. Fate was kind to me, for I was quickly recognized for my works. In 2002 I had a brush with infamy with my painting “Self Portrait as a Martyr.” In 2005 I made SW Art Magazine’s annual list of twenty one artists to watch under the age of 31. In 2008 I was named as one of five “Today’s Masters Making Their Marks” by Fine Art Connoisseur magazine. As my life and my art progresses, I have come to cherish and kindle that familiar sentiment I have always felt since I was a boy; it is the longing for something that can never be fully obtained, but only vaguely hinted in the portraits that I try to make.

I am currently living in the lovely state of Colorado with my far lovelier wife Laura McCormick.

See more of LUCONG HERE