Welcome Artist Ivan Chow

Artist Statement

"My training as an architect has instilled in me a filter of precision and accuracy through which I view the built environment and with which my artistic side competes. My plein air sketches make up for their lack of accuracy with life and energy, while my studio drawings - mostly from photos - experience a gravitational pull back to architectural proclivities and its subsequent formality. I usually adopt an ink-and-watercolor approach to sketching: the fine-line inkwork allows my inner architect to do its thing, while the watercolor allows my inner artist to mess with the former. What I am exploring the interface of both these approaches to artistic expression. But it hasn’t been easy. In addition to a couple of decades of practicing as an architect, I have been in senior management in both the investment and academic worlds for over twenty years. Old habits of precision, efficacy and goal-orientation are hard to loosen and harder to redirect. Yet I am enjoying this late-stage vocational shift more than any previous career phase. Sketching seems to have funneled all my accrued abilities into a process and product that brings satisfaction to self (though not always), joy to others (though not always) and money into pocket. (definitely not always!)” Ivan