Despite being a second generation American, being born of Chinese ancestry in the  (then) U.S. Territory Of Hawaii in the early 1900s, Jared Young Chong was raised in an artistic desert; no studios, no ateliers, no salons, gallery openings nor interdisciplinary exchanges with other artists, poets or musicians except those of Polynesian background.  Against all odds, he departed for San Francisco in 1926 to study Fine Art at the University of California, Berkeley and The San Francisco Art Institute.

 

It was during this period that he gained exposure to a more expansive world of creativity and gained understanding of the principles of art; especially color, composition, line, mass, proportion, light and scale that guided his life time of work.  He avoided the fleeting stylistic influences, such as Abstract Expressionism, that was the primary post war movement spreading from Europe to America.  

 

That said, viewers suggest seeing in his work the cultural influences of Diego Rivera, the Tahitian period of Gauguin, the colorful boldness of Hans Hoffman and the Bay Area Figurative and landscapes of Richard Diebenkorn; albeit expressed with a Polynesian orientation. In reality, the lack of exposure to the barrage of western influences resulted in a timeless, contemporary expression of his own making.