[1] Vogue described Gordon's paintings as having a “secret alchemy that sets them off from the current avalanche of figurative art rooted in identity politics".
[3] At ten, a local newspaper published a photo of Gordon painting an accurate full-scale replica of Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night.
[4] Gordon says that she was doing a lot of master copies at this time, such as paintings after Claude Monet’s water lilies and Georgia O’Keeffe’s poppy flowers.
[10] In 2022, one of her large self-portraits was shown at the Rudolph Tegners Museum outside Copenhagen alongside older established artists like Cecily Brown and Jenna Gribbon.
[15] Gordon attended the 2023 Met Gala as a guest of Balenciaga, wearing an outfit designed for the occasion by Elena Velez.
[20] Gordon's work often revisits and rewrites memories of her childhood by inserting herself, often in multiples, to lay claim to the right to occupy space as a biracial, queer woman.
[23] Her everyday scenes of joy and distress fill large canvases with vibrant, rich cool tones and exacting technical detail.
[22] Her figures' eyes often are unnaturally glossy, their skin soft and plasticky, illustrating the alienation and disconnection in a white, heteronormative space while also offering a surreal escape.
She discovered the work of Liu Wei, which empowered her and inspired her to make paintings of people that she connects with racially and emotionally.
Other artists that Gordon cites as impacting her work are Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman, Dana Shutz, Lisa Yuskavage, Tetsuya Ishida, and Cheyenne Julien.
[28] The painting offered Gordon the ability to reflect and heal from her experiences "as a lesbian Asian girl growing up in a white, upper-middle-class New York suburb.
Asked about this painting in a 2018 interview, Gordon stated: In my recent work, I have this figure, sometimes multiple, in a black, latex, plastic suit that represents my anxiety and depression, personifying it.