I FEAR COLOURS LIKE HOW I FEAR CHILDREN

What if I use just colours for this project? If we strip off the recognisable form and just make use of the interaction of colours, how much can it express?

And while thinking of these, colour field painting naturally came to mind.

Color field painting is a tendency within Abstract Expressionism, distinct from gestural abstraction, or action painting. It was pioneered in the late 1940s by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still, who were all independently searching for a style of abstraction that might provide a modern, mythic art and express a yearning for transcendence and the infinite. To achieve this they abandoned all suggestions of figuration and instead exploited the expressive power of color by deploying it in large fields that might envelope the viewer when seen at close quarters. (extracted from http://www.theartstory.org/movement-color-field-painting.htm)

My understanding of the colour field painting might be just scratching the surface, but personally I find the simple composition and immense use of unmodulated colour in colour field painting fascinating .While researching, I managed to find a few contemporary artist that still deploy the style of colour field painting.

DEREK ROOT

tumblr_m8cp0kskil1qzwmavo1_500 tumblr_m8cp46gber1qzwmavo1_500

I find the use of soft gradient, pastel colour and its large surface area contemplative, and seems to convey a subtle but immense sentiment.

http://www.derekroot.com/post/28855824119/enhancer-oil-wax-on-canvas-and-wood-2012-17-x

MARCO TIRELLI

marco-tirelli-2011-ink-and-acrylic-on-canvas-h-200-x-w-166-cm-insitu tumblr_md9e5anrto1qahuhjo1_540

I am fascinated by the use of soft gradient in both of their work. Marco Tirelli’s painting consist of only variation of value, but the play of light and shadow effectively created an illusion of space on the 2 dimensional plane.

https://www.louise-alexander.com/artist/marco-tirelli/

Land?

“Land is a ship too big for me, it’s a woman too beautiful, it’s a voyage too long, perfume too strong .” (The legend of 1900, 1998)

Research:

Even though I resonate strongly with the quote, I couldn’t quite figure out what I was feeling strongly about. So I tried to unpack the quote and hoped to find my answer.

These are the things in my notes.

land as a vessel: Spaceship Earth is a world view term usually expressing concern over the use of limited resources available on Earth and encouraging everyone on it to act as a harmonious crew working toward the greater good.
land as an individual: Ocean’s Room, by Ashley Yeo and Monica So-Young Moon. Using an assemblage of objects, the two artists created a space which depicts the characteristics of ocean. It is Ocean’s room when she’s not around.
Ocean’s Room, by Ashley Yeo and Monica So-Young Moon http://singapore.coconuts.co/2016/06/07/pics-ocean-explorations-singapore-art-museums-new-odyssey-exhibition

Ocean’s Room, by Ashley Yeo and Monica So-Young Moon http://dessertingbeauty.blogspot.sg/2016/07/odyssey-navigating-nameless-seas-4-june.html

I like how the artist were able to depict the personification in a subtle manner instead of showing an actual figure of the personified ocean.

land as a plan: too much freedom, no sense of direction
land as atmosphere? spilled perfume, too strong, too much, too overwhelming, everywhere, hard to get rid of.

Working Process:

I started by collecting images relevant to the keywords in the quote, throwing them into the same file and see what I can come up with.

At this point I was still unsure about my concept, but with the deadline pushing closer I churned out some work to show, and the outcome is rather disappointing,

The idea was to make use of the scale and composition to show an overwhelming beauty. But this expression is too explicit for my liking.

the following are the other drafts I did:

(The small dot is actually the moon present in the original picture. )

Using simple icons to mark out the key words: landscape, beauty.

Juxtaposing woman figure and landscape together to draw the relation between land and beauty. The woman in her sleep – a beauty that is unaware of the gaze, that is in rest, too precious to disturb.

Depicting earth as just a small submarine in this big universe.

Using facial expression to bring out the strong emotion, to suggest the strong smell of the perfume. The gas mask on a perfume bottle brings out the irony.

Challenges:

Besides grasping the concept, another difficulty for me was to create seamless composition using different images. To me, for the picture to look surreal, the different component should merge naturally. if the picture is obviously photoshopped, it loses its magic. I had to spend some time working on each composition for the picture to look more natural.

Silk-Screen:

First time doing silk-screen printing! It was a fun exposure (HARHAR) .

From managing the amount of ink to lifting the frame from the fabric, every step requires careful execution that i was unaware of. The process also requires room for trial and error.

笔墨等于零

“Brush and ink are only servants of thoughts and emotion. They should follow your emotion and change with the emotion.” – Wu GuanZhong

This post is about the concept and ideas behind my work for 2D project, My line is emo.

I began with my all-time-struggle, being away from home.

1.Diaspora

The dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland.
people who have spread or been dispersed from their homeland.

Being away from one’s homeland can result in various emotions. Firstly, having a new culture and lifestyle can be overwhelming, and the warmth and joy found at home turns into longliness and longing. Secondly, fitting into a foreign culture is never easy, through out the process one would likely experience uneasiness, alienation and detachment. Besides that, the prejudice between the locals and foreigners sometimes result in bitterness and tension.

For uneasiness , I tried to make marks using cooked instant noodles. Which appears quite often in my first few month alone in Singapore. The material captures the uneasiness of living alone in a country, not knowing where to get food or how to order food in english.

For alienation/detachment, I took Huimin’s suggestion and looked into materials that does not mix together.

Firstly, I tried waxing the paper:

In the picture above, the waxing is not thorough enough , I wasn’t satisfied with the result and tried a few more with different thickness of the wax layer and different application of ink, until i obtained the result below:

The patterns formed by the ink is almost painting a broken surface, the thin jagged lines is a good representation of the struggles the foreigners face to connect with the people.

Another material I tried was oil. The following are the several experimental pieces I’ve done.

The satisfied result is the one below, which is obtained by applying ink onto paper, and quickly dripping ink onto the surface. Then, roll the ink around the surface by tilting the paper. The idea of ink being unable to penetrate the paper represent the idea of not being able to fit into the foreign society. The drop of ink traveling on the paper represent an individual, traveling alone, suggesting the sense of solitude.

I also decided to include some methods from the previous post.

The mark made using cling wrap can be used to represent homesickness. Me eating alone always result in having left overs. The cling wrap reminds me of the meals I had when my family is not around, hence suggest the loneliness as well as homesickness.

The cut across the paper surface will be used to suggest bitterness, the subtle appearance and the suggested violence can be used to suggest the bitterness I feel when I hear nasty and prejudiced comment between the locals and the foreigners.

2.home away from home

(idiomatic) A place in which one is as comfortable as one’s actual home.

After being here in Singapore for quite some time, fitting in is no longer a problem. However, identity crisis surfaces as I started to behave more and more like a local. My memory of my hometown fades as I grow more and more familiar with the land that is supposedly foreign to me. I found myself “betraying” my roots and felt a sense of guilt, which lead to my refusal to accept my new identity. This denial then turns into emotional struggle and conflict.

I mixed paper clay with ink to dye it black, and applied a thick layer of the mixture on to paper. When it dries, the clay dries , and some parts fell off. Taking clay as a representation of earth, this piece suggest the feeling of losing connection to one’s roots, and thus the identity that comes with it. The broken surface also suggest the emotional impact that comes with the loss.

While thinking about the conflict, the first thing that came to mind is trash bag.The texture is able to show the act of stretching clearly, and evoke the sense of internal struggles. Trash bag also carries meanings on its own. It suggests the state of not being wanted by both places. I can neither be a 100% local of Singapore, nor go back to being a true Taiwanese.

Other materials are tracing paper, which suggests distance and fading memories.

During individual consultation with Joy she introduce me to the Ted Talk below.

As someone who is away from home, I find the following quote from the talk very relatable.

“Perhaps my biggest problem with coming from countries is the myth of going back to them.I’m often asked if I plan to “go back” to Ghana. I go to Accra every year, but I can’t “go back” to Ghana…. We can never go back to a place and find it exactly where we left it. Something, somewhere will always have changed,most of all, ourselves. People.”

The speaker also highlighted that we tend to assume someone’s identity based on where they came from, when the identity is in fact build with experiences from all the different places that and individual had live in. Hence, one need not to be confined by the culture of his/her hometown.

Which remind me of the Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo, in which the artist confront the duality of her identity, and accept the fact that the different cultures co-exist within her, while admitting the importance of each of them.

which lead me to the thought:Perhaps the attitude of local is not the only thing that separates the foreigners from fitting in.

Sometimes, the foreigners refuse to accept their own identity as outsider, resulting in unhappy interactions with the locals. Other times, the foreigners refuse to even try to fit in with the local, because they refuse to accept the new culture.

With those thoughts in mind, I went on and look through a few artists who dealt with diaspora and related issues. The following artists caught my attention.

Brailliterate (文盲文) by Xu Bing, 1993

(click image to get more info)

In this work, the artist play with different form of languages to evoke the issue of misinterpretation and misunderstanding due to the difference in culture.

I find the work relatable. Being friends of both the local and the foreigners, I sometimes witness the misinterpretation or prejudice caused by difference in culture and language here in Singapore. This prompted me to shift my thoughts towards the interactions between the locals and foreigners.

Maybe some of the conflict and tension between can be resolved, as long as one switch their perspective around or change their attitude. Such idea can be suggested by making different marks using the same material, by changing the application method.

During my experimentation, I realised that thinner paper tends to warp, even though the warping shows poor craftsmanship, but I think it can be a metaphor of the influence and impact of emotions on an individual.

Another artist that inspired me (more in terms of style and visual) is Wu Guan Zhong.

The simplicity and his use of negative space inspired me to reconsider the format and overall presentation of my work.