Henry Wo was born in Guangdong, China in 1927. Wo showed great interest in art in his early childhood. He entered International Art School of Hong Kong to study Western and Chinese painting and learned the skills of sketching and drawing in 1946. In 1949, Wo began studies under Chao Shao An, the great master of Lingnan School in Hong Kong and learned the essence of his style. In 1975, he moved to the United States from Hong Kong with his family and settled in Alexandria, Virginia.

For over 60 years Wo has diligently sketched and painted in nature’s own setting, grasping the essence of a scene or subject and producing a work of infinite creativity. He has also studied in great detail a wash technique in color where layer upon layer of washes is used to create a background with a hazy quality yet with a brightness as shown in his painting, Rest for the Toilers and in many of his lotus paintings and new landscape paintings.

Wo had worked out of Torpedo factory Art Center exhibiting and teaching Chinese Painting in Alexandria, VA; Martha’s Vineyard, MA (summer only) and other cities in the United States; Canada; Hong Kong; Taiwan; Singapore; Malaysia; Japan and Australia… His work is included in collections of Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Hawaii Art Museum; Birmingham Museum of Art and Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; Amherst College, Massachusetts; Springfield Art Museum, Missouri; City of Hamilton Art Gallery, Australia; National Museum of History, Taipei; Peking University, Beijing; Lingnan Art Museum of Dongguan, China; Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Hong Kong Museum of Art, among others.

In 2007 to 2009 he was honored by the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; Hong Kong Heritage Museum; Guangzhou Museum of Art; Mobile Museum of Art, Alabama; City Museum of Art, Dongguan, China; Strathmore Art Gallery, Maryland; Lingnan Art Museum of Dongguan, China with a traveling exhibition to celebrate his 80th birthday.