Hilary Harkness interviews painter An Hoang on the occasion of her exhibtion As the Crow Flies at Halsey McKay Gallery, New York, on view through April 30, 2014.

Hoang remarks: "Alaska had an important impact on my work because the landscape is a striking contrast to my daily experience in the city. I had the opportunity to look out at the open sea, to hike on glaciers and quietly float along a fjord. To experience the landscape from those various perspectives was very valuable to my work; to be able to see the way the light reflects off the glacier; to hike into a glacial ice cave filled with electric blue light; to walk along the rocky terrain and to be able to see the way the recession of the glacier reveals the record of time on the surface of the land underneath… My exploration lies in representing contrasting experiences of nature and the urban environment to evoke the spirit and atmosphere of place. Working from memory, these experiences inform the paintings which become abstracted through the process of making."