Local painter Warren Chang is especially adept at portraiture. He employs a patient hand and a fine eye for the details that draw out personality from a person simply sitting and being painted. He’s even written a book on the matter, Narrative Paintings, using his own studio workshops as a model by which he examines the genre. So whatever the subject of his paintings, you know that it’s been deeply seen, studied and felt by Chang. No different for his fieldworker series.
They are paintings of fieldworkers, dressed up in layers of clothes, working in the fields or resting near them. They’ve been described as unsentimental, done in a color palette that is plain and faithful to the work being performed – muted greens, somber grays, hazy yellows. Faces are even obscured by handkerchiefs and hats, though the expression of his subjects comes through in the way they stoop or sit. They are studies in labor – the often anonymous labor of ag fieldworkers.
“I’m really not actually drawn to the ag business,” he says. “I’m drawn to the workers. The humanity of the people. The longer I’ve been doing this subject – now about 12 years – it’s become a very educational experience because I become more informed.”
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