About

BIO

Misato Pang is a multidisciplinary artist whose work bridges personal narrative with broader cultural and political themes. Born in 1992 in Hong Kong to Japanese and Chinese parents, she relocated to the United States during her late adolescence. Pang earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Brooklyn College and later completed a Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the New York Studio School.
Her artistic practice encompasses painting, ceramics, collage, and printmaking, often exploring identity, memory, and social phenomena. Pang's work has been exhibited in various venues across the United States and Japan, including the Susquehanna Art Museum and Cerulean Arts. Notably, her painting "Sunday Tree" received the Best of Show award at the 37th Annual Exhibition at Art St. Louis. In 2023, her work was featured in New American Paintings Issue #167, representing the Midwest region. Additionally, her work was selected by art critic and curator Jerry Gogosian from a pool of 2,000 submissions, highlighting her growing recognition in the contemporary art scene. Currently based in St. Louis, Missouri, Pang teaches art at Maryville University. She is also the co-founder of Janes and Pang Atelier, a creative studio focused on supporting artistic collaboration, hosting exhibitions, and engaging the local community through painting and drawing.

Artist statement

By infusing motifs from Japanese folklore, Chinese customs, and classical Western forms, my paintings celebrate this confluence of Asian imagery and the history of European painting. While my work is primarily figurative, I am most interested in the journey of light and its power to transfigure a subject.  I use observation as a starting point for more invented forms, investigating the abstract qualities in nature that captivate me visually. Whenever I paint from life, I spend equal time searching as I am making marks on a surface. The light shifts rapidly in an instance of looking away from the subject, and I’m confronted with an urgency to simultaneously interpret and invent color relationships as to remain coherent and true to my previous observation. It is an ongoing quest to activate the entire painting, keeping tension in the right areas while maintaining an overall sense of harmony and resolution. 

Painting has become a labor of constructing presences and keeping mysteries. In concealing and revealing form, I’ve stumbled into a journey of search, which requires faith, trust, and patience. I believe that what I do in the studio directly affects who I am as a person and how I conduct myself in the world.