{"id":80952,"date":"2024-01-14T07:01:06","date_gmt":"2024-01-14T15:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/hi-lo\/?p=80952"},"modified":"2024-01-13T12:52:01","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T20:52:01","slug":"tidawhitney-lek-painter-long-beach-lacma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/arts-culture\/tidawhitney-lek-painter-long-beach-lacma","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach painter Tidawhitney Lek has ‘made it into the major leagues’ of the art world"},"content":{"rendered":"

A detail most people notice about artist Tidawhitney Lek\u2019s<\/a> paintings are the hands \u2014 creeping around the edge of a canvas; springing up from the grass with fingertips together, prayer-like; emerging unexpectedly from the dank depths of a storm sewer.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Long Beach, Lek has found success in the art world with work representing a blend of her family and cultural background, her past and the present.<\/p>\n

A show of her paintings can be seen at the Long Beach Museum of Art Downtown<\/a> until Feb. 4. (Also, a mural Lek painted in 2019 can be seen at Gaviota Avenue and Anaheim Street.)<\/p>\n

Her art teacher at Wilson High School, Dominic Szeto, said he recognized her technical talent and drive when she took his advanced painting and drawing classes around 2010 \u2013 and since then, Lek has \u201cdeveloped the conceptual and theoretical sides\u201d of her work.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art recently added one of her pieces to its collection, which to Szeto means, \u201cyou\u2019ve made it into the major leagues.”<\/p>\n

Lek said she thinks maybe now her family understands what she\u2019s doing with her life. Her parents, who were adolescents when they came to the U.S. from Cambodia in the late 1980s, wondered whether she could earn a living making art, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I sold my first painting,\u201d Lek said of her father, \u201che was like, ‘wow.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
A painting by local artist Tidawhitney Lek at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her paintings have been getting bigger over the past year \u2013 one three-paneled piece in the LBMA show is 6 feet by 12 feet \u2013 but she\u2019s done some as small as a sheet of paper and usually has 10 paintings in various stages of progress going at a time.<\/p>\n

Lek said she\u2019ll take tons of pictures of anything she might want to paint and look through them later for ideas. The three-paneled painting depicts the front of a convenience store, complete with sign-covered windows, and just inside the open door, a woman reaching across the counter to pay an unseen cashier \u2013 and it\u2019s a real place, the Dong Mai Market at the corner of Anaheim and Orange avenues.<\/p>\n

The hands that are a running theme for Lek grew out of a conversation with her mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were sitting next to each other and she was like, \u2018You have wrinkly hands,\u2019\u201d Lek said. \u201cI just laughed, because I understood what she meant \u2013 ‘you have hard-working hands.’\u201d<\/p>\n

At some point, she started adding glittery fingernails to most of the hands to signify that they\u2019re feminine.<\/p>\n

Hands can tell you about a person without having to see the rest of them, Lek said. They fit in with the themes in her work of neighborhood and community, family and generational trauma.<\/p>\n

Having one of her paintings at LACMA means more people can see her work, and Lek is happy about that. \u201cIt\u2019s for myself, but I didn\u2019t know there was such a community that needed it too.\u201d<\/p>\n

In high school, she didn\u2019t care about art contests \u2013 Szeto would enter her work and bring her the ribbon \u2013 but she\u2019s glad he encouraged her to go to Cal State Long Beach, where she graduated with an art degree in 2017.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Local artist Tidawhitney Lek stands in front of one of her paintings at the Long Beach Museum of Art in Downtown Long Beach, Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Szeto said he hadn\u2019t spoken with Lek for a few years when he went to a show at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and spotted two of her paintings immediately. They reconnected and she\u2019s planning to visit Wilson High to speak to his students.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an art teacher, you don\u2019t want to train people to be the next Van Gogh,\u201d Szeto said. \u201cYou want to train them so that they love the arts \u2013 so to have one (student) make it to this level is quite unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a teenager, Lek \u2014 now 31 \u2014 knew she needed to consider \u201cwhat I was going to do for probably the rest of my life, and I had to like it,\u201d she said<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s doing it, and she\u2019s thinking about what\u2019s next. The sixth of seven children in her family, Lek appreciates that she gets to take chances in life that her older siblings didn\u2019t get to take, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realize I\u2019ve had my moment being propelled as an emerging artist, now it\u2019s like being able to sustain it.”<\/p>\n

The Long Beach Museum of Art Downtown, 356 E. 3rd St., Long Beach, is open Thursdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tidawhitney Lek found success with work representing a blend of her family and cultural background, her past and the present. She currently has a show at the Long Beach Museum of Art and LACMA has acquired one of her paintings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":80811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5322],"tags":[1556],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[32180],"class_list":["post-80952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-painting","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80952"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80998,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80952\/revisions\/80998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80952"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=80952"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=80952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}