Chorus, acrylic on canvas,  36"x 48"  y. 2010 

Tuyet (Tess) Thi Ong is originally from Vietnam, and lived in Paris, before moving to Houston where she now lives and works.  Her abstract paintings on canvas and paper are colorful, energetic and bold. Her confident color choices and freedom of composition, as well as her interest in texture and layering stem from her numerous cultural experiences and backgrounds. 

Although Ms. Ong is fluent in English, Chinese, Vietnamese, and French, she desires to communicate non-verbally through painting, leaving permanent records of a time and place. The paintings reveal her interest in language and communication, displaying qualities of calligraphy within the paint, revealing to the viewer a hidden language of mark making.

The artist has been included in Assistance League of Houston exhibition  in 2011, the Visual Arts Alliance in 2010 and 2011, and the 28th juried exhibition in 2010 at the Glassell School of Art , where she has studied under Brian Portman, Terrell James and most recently Francesca Fuchs.

From the artist:"bits of reality can stimulate an idea for a composition, whether it’s a quality in the sunlight of the day or bits of multi colored paint scraped from my pallet, each painting speaks with clarity.  I create abstract compositions with dynamic movement; many layers of gestures create a network of lines traveling through an airy space. At times the numerous gestures seem closer to a natural form like the pattern of tree bark or lines describing the movement  on the surface of water. My experiments with texture and layering often create a sense of illusionary space, however sometimes the thickness of the paint sits on the surface of the painting, and wraps around the edges, insisting on the object of the canvas itself."

Her painting media include oil, acrylic, collage, colored pencil, and colored ink, on a variety of surfaces: paper, canvas, and plywood.