Ann Phong's artwork.
Excerpts from reviews: 

- Despite her attraction to dark atmospherics, Phong's paintings aren't depressing. Rather, her paintings' lovely tactile surfaces contradict her bleak imagery. Without being too precious about applying her pigments to canvas, Phong makes her acrylics take on the vibrant quality of oil paints. By Neil Kendricks. San Diego The Union Tribune, December 30, 1999.

•  They are vividly colored, intensely personal meditations on loss, on straddling two cultures, on expectations that collapse under the weight of reality, on the strange miracle of survival itself. Often, there are boats. 30 to Watch. They're the Future of the Vietnamese-American Community . By Teri Sforza. The Orange County Register . April 25, 2005.

•  There is a lyrical quality of hope to Ann Phong's Expressionist paintings that belies imagery of boats, bombs and swamps. Work Give View Into Vietnamese American Psyche . By William Wilson. Los Angeles Times April 25, 1994.

•  Phong's paintings are rich, lyrical narrations that depict the dualities of life before and after her escape from communism. Her work reveals lovely, fragmented images of everyday Vietnamese objects surrounded by scribbled texts. They all relate to the uprooting of an entire population, and the difficulty of assimilating into a radically different environment. Images: Art of Immigrants . By Shirle Gottlieb. Pres-Telegram. June 24, 1995.

- Working in acrylic on canvas without preliminary drawings, Phong reaches within to grasp at emotions that will be expressed in her brushwork. Often there are many layers of paint. Realism, expressionism and abstraction are combined in every select colors that interact symbolically. In part of her works are a personal diary but overall they address conflict, alienation, dislocation, destruction, desperation, relocation and hope. The odyssey of the uprooted comes to life through a young artist's tragic experiences. Written by Norma Jean Squires , LA ARTCORE Monthly shows. July, 1998.

•  Phong articulates her state of being with her sensitive touch and delivery of paint on canvas. Texture of her painting has become more fluid, spontaneous and less labored. LA Artcore Quarterly. Sept/Dec. 2001.

•  Traveling the razor's edge between illusion one moment and abstraction the next, Phong's paintings conjure, manifest, and extinguish images of reality, memory and nightmares. Frequently recounted from multiple vantage points, her images use abstraction to link diverse memories and events in a manner that acknowledges implicit shifts in time and space. At one moment, and from one angle, the subject of one of Phong's paintings may appear to be ordinary still-life or landscape scene, but as one segues through the image improbable and even nightmarish realities appear. For Phong, rhythmic strokes, thick textures, and lush colors are all used as tools of psychic liberation, conveying unspeakable memories with gestured immediacy . By Collette Chattopadhyay. LA ARTCORE Monthly Reviews. October 2002.