JP Neang
About the Create! Magazine 10th Anniversary Book: Create! Magazine is honored to celebrate a decade of contemporary art by publishing a look back at previously selected artists: their achievements, career growth, and more since being published. Stay tuned for the book launch in fall 2026, and join our newsletter to stay up to date.
JP Neang, featured in both Create! Magazine and the Create! Magazine 10th Anniversary Book, is a Cambodian American illustrator and educator based in California. She has built an independent practice exhibiting work across the United States and internationally while developing arts education programs for over a decade.
Neang’s work explores intergenerational memory, tension, and stillness, informed by her family’s survival of the Khmer Rouge and her experience as a first-generation Cambodian American. Working primarily in black and white, her compositions use negative space and restraint to create quiet, intimate encounters that invite reflection. Her visual language centers on the relationship between line, gravity, and pause—moments where tension becomes both visible and contemplative. Her practice is shaped by histories where creative expression was once dangerous, and by contemporary questions of identity, inheritance, and freedom. This duality informs both her artistic and educational work.
Neang has exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and abroad. Alongside her studio practice, she has spent 14 years developing arts programs in low-income and international communities. She has collaborated with organizations including Itoshima Arts (Fukuoka, Japan), Guinean Arts (Conakry, Guinea), and Light and Leadership (Huancayo, Peru), designing culturally responsive programs that prioritize local sourcing and long-term sustainability.
Her current work continues to investigate silence, resilience, and the emotional weight carried between generations.
www.jpneang.com
How has the environment you grew up in affected your art practice?
As a child, I found it enchanting to create art of any kind. It felt like my little secret, where I could whisper all my stories. Being a first-generation Cambodian American, making art was not considered a benefit but rather a nuisance in my household. Nevertheless, even today, I hold on to that feeling of "creating" like a precious new seed that I have discovered. I nurture it and love it, stretching its limbs to walk among the world.
If your artwork was a mirror, what would it reflect?
Peace and a whisper of calamity.
What is the most difficult part (or your least favorite part) of your process?
As an educator during the day and an artist at night, finding enough time to complete a piece of work is challenging but not impossible.
Pursuing ‘artist’ as a career is not for the faint of heart. What is the most rewarding aspect of this pursuit?
The process of eliminating self-imposed limitations has been one of the most significant and fulfilling benefits I have experienced through art. Pursuing this path is not just a profession but a way of life and a mindset. When you choose to see things from a different perspective, your previous notions and beliefs unravel, revealing that your potential is boundless.
If your art is in a lineage of artists working within similar veins, who would be part of your lineage and why?
The hands of my ancestors guide every stroke and push I make, flowing within my veins and bones. I am their hope for a paradise that they could not have.
