The son of refugees from Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime, Hem was inspired by our city’s robust Cambodian community to create the image you see here.

Hem’s paintings typically highlight an individual within a group of figures, homing in on the one person who is often somberly staring out from the canvas. Using a cool palette in which the colors do not quite match up with the real world, the artist creates somber moods in illusion-like spaces set at a remove from reality. Although his color scheme—with its supernatural rendering of the natural world—elicits comparisons to impressionism, Hem also echoes graffiti art based on his straightforward and illustrative rendering of figures and space, as well as allusions to street culture, art, and fashion.

Working from a photo of a young girl he encountered in Cambodia, he set her against a dream-like forest full of trees and fireflies.