light

oil & mixed media on masonite board, 34.3 x 132 cm (+ 5 cm relief surface), 2002

An old painting, very heavy. I feel like this now, buried sort of feeling, but not death, more like seeding, if that is the right word.

black wings

oil on wood panel, work in progress [detail]

not much

I wish there was more to show for the current state of the June letters but as it is, there just isn't much yet.

It looks like i probably won't even incorporate the letters themselves. at least not on this panel. I am painting the words right onto the wooden panel instead of hammering the cut-out letters onto it as originally planned.

The letters* went through several stages, creating new canvases in the process of it:



The panel above is this new [unfinished] painting below--


[previous post of a detail image of this]



These became the pink series. I thought the letters could work being separated on a series of mini panels but doing so broke up the words into just meaningless letters.



Below, i was feeling so giddy, thinking these are the colors and this would be the final stage. All the letters fit on the panel perfectly, leaving out just the question mark...


But the words are just on the surface and they need to be etched deeper somehow.

-------------
*These letters came from a line in one of John Keats' poems, To the Ladies Who Saw Me Crown'd:

Or June that breathes out life for butterflies?

colors of june & august

more on this later... (if i get anywhere with it)

dusk falling

window view for xiaodi, sunsetting, not dusk yet.

Wearing sunglasses as i am typing this by my window...don't know why i didn't think of this sooner. It makes looking at the computer monitor so much easier on my aging pinguecula eyes [warning! this link will take you to some not very pretty images]. One eye got inflamed from too much fun in the sun or something. Probably more from lack of good sleep is what it is...

I've been having some really bad dreams lately. It started with the one where i get a call that xm died. I actually tried emailing him the next day but the messages sent to different email addresses all bounced back. Have no other way to get in touch with him right now.

Other disaster dreams:
[two nights ago] I wake up and saw that my scalp is veiny reddish, and realized with horror that it is from hair falling out. My sisters are with me. We all turned to look at my pillow and saw a pile of fallen hair. May or Ting quickly grabbed all of it and threw it out, to save me from looking more at it.

[some days before the hair dream] I am in some construction site and running around trying to get to where i was going. Lots of pipes and tunnels. Bumped into someone who is bleeding and also trying to find a way out. He is also looking for his lover. It turns out i am in the middle of some secret planning for some world destruction. I woke up before i could get out of it.

[last night] I am driving and suddenly drove off the road. But thankfully, i did not dent the car or anyone. So i guess, it is not all bad. The two ladies at the insurance company are giving me a hell of a problem though.

In my waken state, besides my one red eye, i am actually doing quite well. So i really don't know what is up with these dreams. Thinking and absorbing too much maybe.

Well, there is some anxiety with the paintings i am working on...



This past weekend i was working on these* and boy doesn't it show that i don't know how to paint. I envy those who have such a natural sense of how the paint moves and how the colors could come together the way they want them to. Me, i have to keep trying and trying and pushing the paint around to see what would work. In a very clumsy and 'amaturish' way.

These are at their muddy state right now, and i will quit being ashamed of them:











(*They are actually panels from one of the cut-up black series paintings. Not sure if they will remain part of the black series or not later.)

new mini pink series?

oil & mixed media on wooden panel, 6"x 6" each

May, look what came out from the comment you left me on that pink painting (the first one above is supposed to be a mini version for you but it did not turn out as good as i thought it would...so it may have to be reworked into something else...)



I thought i could make use of the June letters to use on these but they are not working well with any of them. Just as Uschi suggested here, the background for those letters does need to be on a longer and slimmer canvas...and i was so excited thinking these letters will be my fastest completed works yet.

Instead, more new problematic paintings to add to my pile of unfinished works!

june letters not going anywhere

This is giving me a headache pissing me off...!

pink skies

oil, string & mixed media on Masonite board, 16.6" x 20" [work in progress]

When i was little (around 10 or younger?), i remembered one time noticing how red the sky was turning as the sun was going down. I was outside walking with my dad at the time. All around us, there was this sudden pink glow everwhere. I loved it.

For some reason, i started skipping to this rhyme in Chinese without really knowing what i was saying. In translation, it goes something like this: Red red sky, the elderly is going to freeze and die.

As soon as i said that, my dad scolded at me and told me not to say that again. I was a little taken back because my dad, in all his gentle ways, hardly ever snaps at any one of us. I stopped to think why and immediately thought of my grandmother sick in bed all the time.

It was then that i understood how important my grandmother was to my dad even though he never expressed it. I started to see my dad in a new light, knowing that a lot of what is unspoken runs deep within him.

It is like what my mom says: If you want to see how much the man loves you, just look at his actions, not any lovey dovey words that he doesn't say.

Happy Father's Day, BA!

cry

oil on masonite board, 43.5" x 47.5"

Recently took this out of storage to rework it. The way the arm is cut off was a cop out and i knew it even though i had rationalized that the intention is to have that severe cut-off effect all around the subject. I think i may need to physically cut it up or put some clothes on the girl.




[old Chinese characters referring to good fortune, luck, etc.]

pear 1.1 vintage blue

oil and string on masonite board, 19.75" x 19.2" x 1.75" [work in progress]
(1.75" is board [frame] thickness from wall)

Recently worked on an old painting that I have cut up and painted over. This is my favorite blue at the moment. I am loving the string "drawing" of the three loops hanging on the vertical line:



Really excited about it but it's also making me a bit tentative to continue for fear of "ruining" it...

skin/flesh (detail)

A glob of caulk applied on the surface of the wood
and then painted over.

Below is the back of the same spot:



-detail above-









-detail below-




The two images above are painted on one single wood board (the front and the back of it), 36" x 11.25"


String coated with some caulk and then painted over.

Below is the back detail of the above spot:

skin flesh

<--outside (front)

inside -->
(back)

oil, string & mixed media on wood, 36" x 11.25"

I think this may be the first painting in oil that made me feel like i could actually work with paint my way, which is on wood (not canvas) and incorporating other non-[overpriced] artstore materials with it (string and caulk, yes!). Was it 7 years ago that i was so happy with how this painting turned out? thinking how innovative it was that i used the back as well? that it would be mounted on its side so that the viewer could take in both the front and the back?

But now looking at it, it is kind of making me sick in the stomach. I was thinking maybe i just need to touch it up a little since it is a little scratched up from storage but now i may have to cut it up soon...

black series: II

-click for larger image-

On and off, i've been working on this series since 2002(?), starting with 4 wooden 24" square panels (the 3 pieces on the left, and the 4 red pieces on the right have been sawed off not too long ago this year). It's been a real pain both with the subject matter and physically working and reworking the surface of each piece.

Here are some close-up images of the red pieces where the wood has been carved and gauged away:


The black layer is revealed from scratching off the red pink surface.

The yellowish tan color is the raw wood being exposed.

The blue is the layer beneath the black.

<-- This image here was at one point the 'final' state of one of the original 4 square panels... until it got cut into 3 pieces... At first, i was really satisfied with how it turned out - all very nice and clean-cut without being too rigid, i thought. But then one day the black just got too much. It was just such an empty artificial piece of crap that was trying to be all deep and abstract. -cut up into three pieces below-

You see here with all these pieces i have right now, everything is somewhat all over the place, a frustrating mess. I won't even address the blue and orange piece (next to the red pieces in the first picture at the top) except to say that it has quite a few layers of nothingness.

As trite as it may be, i started with the idea of 'inside/outside', which had/has been a constant theme in my work in one way or another. The black is the 'inside', which on good days represents inner strength, and on other days, it is just everything dark and empty. 'Outside' is whatever that juxtaposes with the black. Well, as it is, this idea is not going too far for me...

<---BUT, i do love love this painting that came out of all this mess. I must say though, most people everyone who sees this hanging up nice and proud in my living room don't seem to care too much for it. I look at it and it just makes me so happy. What does it for me is that constant blue square that opens out to the sky everytime i look at it...

black series: I **black spring**

oil & mixed media on wood panel, 24"x 23.75" x 1.75" (1.75" is panel thickness from wall)

I will post up more details about this painting later today tomorrow...it is supposedly part of the 'black series' that i have chopped up...

**update 05.18.07
Thanks to my dear friend Aliya, i have a title for this painting! Aliya, thank you for your constant encouragement and interest in seeing what would "pop up through [this] black spring..."

the little teapot

oil on masonite board, 9.125" x 7.125" x 1.75"
(1.75" is board [frame] thickness from wall)

a red red day

oil on masonite board, 9.75" x 12.5" x 1.75"

(1.75" is board [frame] thickness from the wall)