Jade Fon Woo Art

Detailed watercolor landscape of the San Francisco Ferry Building by Jade Fon Woo (American, 1911-1983). Signed "Jade Fon" lower right. Complete paper conservation performed, acid ph balance. Unframed. Image size: 15"H x 22"W. Jade Fon (aka Jade Fon Woo) was born in 1911 in San Jose California and grew up in Winslow, Arizona where he studied at the University of Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s and joined the Art Students League. In the mid-1940s, he moved to San Francisco and did some commercial illustration, before becoming an art instructor in the 1970s and later founding a watercolor workshop in Asilomar. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society and the California Water Color Society. He died in 1983. Founder of a well-known watercolor workshop in Asilomar, California, Jade Fon became a California plein-air* painter whose work combined Oriental influences and regionalism called "California Style*." His subjects range from cityscapes to wildlife in natural surroundings. In the art world, he was called "Jade Fon", although his full name was Jade Fon Woo. He was born in San Jose, California and was raised in Winslow, Arizona and attended the University of Arizona at Flagstaff before continuing his higher education at the University of New Mexico. In the 1930s, he moved back to California where he attended the Art Students League in Los Angeles and exhibited with the California Water Color Society*. He was a movie studio scenic artist and worked on Gone With the Wind. From the mid-1940s, Jade Fon lived in San Francisco from where he taught at Diablo Valley College, worked as a night club entertainer and commercial illustrator, and founded the watercolor workshop school in Asilomar. He died in Bakersfield on November 14, 1983. He was a member of several watercolor societies including the California Watercolor Society and was also a member of the Society of Western Artists*. Noted as both a skilled watercolorist and teacher, Jade Fon (Woo) was born in San Jose, California, but moved to the Southwest with his family when he was a child. One of his first art lessons was from a cowboy, who pointed to the surface of an outhouse as an example, to show him how light and shade were necessary to create form. Fon's first job was as a waiter in his uncle's restaurant, but by the 1930s he had moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood film studios as a scenic artist. In the 1940s, an extended strike in Hollywood precipitated his move to San Francisco. There he was employed for a few years as a singer and emcee at the well-known Forbidden City nightclub on Sutter Street, sometimes creating watercolors of patrons and performers. The smoky club atmosphere aggravated his asthma, prompting Fon to shift to teaching, which he did for thirty years at Diablo Valley College, and ultimately he moved to Pacheco, near the town of Martinez. He also taught highly successful workshops at Asilomar, near Carmel, for over twenty years. Credit for the above information is given to: Asian American Art, 1850-1970, edited by Gordon H. Chang, Mark Dean Johnson...