Master's Stroke

In the small town of Locke, there is a big painter. One who feels the temperature of the blue highlights in an open field of grass. One who, as he paints the lavender sky, becomes a white cloud or gliding bird. One who came to the United States with a goal of being a great painter and found success.

For Ning Hou, the Chinese-born painter with galleries in Locke, Florida and New York City, the San Joaquin Delta River is a special place that gave him the inspiration to be the renowned painter he is today. Hou paints the area's agriculture, nature, history and people.

Fusions of color, technique and his ponderings on the future of the world are translated into each of his paintings. His work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout the United States, including the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and The Haggin Museum in Stockton.

His most recent show, "Central Valley Landscapes," will be on display at Downtown Lodi's Knowlton Gallery through the end of April.

"I think he's one of the major painters in the Sacramento/San Joaquin region," Robin Knowlton, owner of The Knowlton Gallery said. "It's easy to connect with his work. It's so vibrant and full of life and has a really deep emotional charge to it."

Perhaps his most famous painting is "The Salt of the Earth," currently on display at The Crocker.

The subject is Lodi's grape harvest and it tells the area's story by fusing black and Hispanic workers, a Japanese machine, an American wrench and a Chinese painter. It is Hou's way to honors laborers in San Joaquin County, the place he feels adopted him.

Xiao Min, Hou's assistant, shows paintings in the hallway of Hou's house and studio. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

Hou lives in San Mateo, but spends half of his week painting in his studio and running his gallery, both of which are in Locke. Throughout the year, he spends time at his galleries in New York City and Florida.

Rejection in America

Hou, 51, moved to the United States from China in 1983. Having studied under more than 30 master teachers since the age of 8, Hou fled the Communist country for a chance to make it as a painter in New York City. But he had a harsh realization. It wasn't going to be so easy.

It wasn't just that gallery owners who thought his work looked too much like the painters' work he studied, but they also told him that they couldn't sell Chinese art.

"(The gallery owner) said people go to New York to buy Chinese food, not Chinese art," Hou said, who was also asked to change his name to something more American.

The rejection fueled him. He began searching for his subject.

'Everything has to be original'

What he discovered was a woman, who would, months later, become his wife.

Her name is Patricia Conway, now 65. She is an Irish, Yugoslavian, French woman from Chicago. He describes her as being an intelligent woman from the hippy generation, and he's still absolutely in love.

When they first met, she saw what the New York gallery owners had also noticed. The contents of Hou's portfolio resembled the works of French masters — Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse and even Picasso. He mastered their skills, but still, they weren't his own.

In his Locke studio, Ning Hou works on a painting of Sandhill cranes that will be shown at the Knowlton Gallery. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

Hou and Conway discovered San Francisco and fell in love with Chinatown. She encouraged him to paint scenes that had never been done before, to create his own style.

"(To be a) fine artist, everything has to be original, self-expression, very new," Hou said.

In San Francisco, finding something that had never been painted was difficult.

That's when they drove the Delta's Levee Road and discovered the river.

Inspiration in the Valley

He looked to open a gallery in Rio Vista. When that fell through, he found out about the Chinese town of Locke. That is where he met Connie King, the artist, long-time Locke resident and gallery owner who sold him the old house in Locke that would become one of his studios.

King, a painter herself, taught Hou about perspective, and eventually became what he calls "my American mother."

As she sits in his studio's kitchen, King jokes about the day he moved in, "I wouldn't have showed him the house if I didn't like him."

It is while living in Locke that Hou discovered the keys to his success in open fields, vineyards and wildlife. He continued to paint, between three and eight hours each day. His paintings are colorful, deep in meaning and thick with layers and purposeful globs of paint.

'If Van Gogh and Monet were still alive, they wouldn't mind living here.'

In his Locke gallery, Ning Hou's work is displayed. His painting, "The Salt of the Earth" is his way of honoring local laborers. He uses the statue when teaching drawing. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

Now that he is a full-time painter, Hou can look back on what he first learned from Locke. First, he learned to not be ashamed of being Chinese. And second, he learned color.

Anywhere else in the world, he would use orange to paint the golden light. Even Van Gogh and Monet had to use brighter colors to get the look they wanted.

"But when I used the same recipe in California I found out I totally failed because gold in California is white gold," he said.

And so he uses violet to paint the sky, and it turns out vibrant and perfect. Even when he paints the highlights of the grass he uses blue violet colors.

"If Van Gogh and Monet were still alive, they wouldn't mind living here. You don't have to exaggerate color — it's already there," he laughs.

To get to this stage, he had to learn to see color differently, as well as create a new technique that requires him to mix seven colors for each brush stroke.

Knowlton Gallery owner, Robin Knowlton, says his dedication to skill and art is part of what make him a great impressionist painter.

"He has really calculated how to capture that particular scene. He thinks, 'How many layers of paint is it going to take to bring a scene to life?'" Knowlton said.

When he is painting, he tries to capture the light, which he says is the color behind the temperature. He realized that to capture the seven colors of sunlight, he needs seven colors of paint on each brush stroke.

"Central Valley Landscapes"

Where: Knowlton Gallery, 115 S. School St.
When: March 4 through April 26
Opening Reception: 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on March 7
Information: 368-5123
Painting demonstration by Ning Hou: March 15 from Noon to 3 p.m. at the Knowlton Gallery.
Information: 368-5123

Ning Hou Fine Art Gallery

Where: 13964 Main St. in Locke
Hours: 12:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays
Information: (916) 776-1819, http://www.ninghou.com

"In history, only a couple of artists have that dramatic effect. I think the first it Monet — he only combined three colors," Hou said.

Connecting with the spirits

At the end of Main Street in the old Chinese fishing town, about 30 minutes from Lodi, is the Ning Hou Gallery. It is painted in fresh red paint and the letters are gold. A balcony hangs over the entrance, giving it the same raggedy look as the other businesses on Main Street. The narrow one-way road is lined with businesses like a Chinese bookstore, a small market, open-only once-in-a-while galleries and Al's Place (a steak house formerly known as Al the Wop), where Hou eats peanut butter sandwiches. Through toilet planters, citrus trees and locked doors, there are remnants of a civilization that thrived decades ago, when Locke was built by the Chinese for the Chinese. Now its population has decreased to about 60, and it remains a destination for tourists to admire on the weekends.

Hou's gallery is separate from his studio, an old house behind the ramshackled main street. Each room is painted a different color of bright pastel. Mostly, he paints in the kitchen on huge canvases that his assistant, Xiao Min, makes. Outside of his doorway is a community garden filled with random bits of carpet, bathroom sinks, plants and hammocks.

But the chipped paint on buildings, chicken wire fences and orange rusted sheet metal found throughout the town are Hou's connection to the past, to the ancestors.

"I somehow feel they are alive," he said. "In the older paint, the wood chips, you can feel the older spirit."

He's not religious or superstitious, but he says the ancestors want their descendants to enjoy an easier life.

An easier life isn't exactly what he found when he first left China. But now, life is great.

"The United States gave me a beautiful wife, and I gave back my heart," he said.

Contact Lauren Nelson at Laurenn@lodinews.com.

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Master's Stroke

International painter finds inspiration in Locke, Lodi and San Joaquin Delta River

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