Tag Archives: Publication

An Inscrutable Portrait, Stare

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My 2022 oil painting, Stare, portrays a precocious boy who emerged from a chaotic and somewhat menacing background. The lighter and purer figure demonstrates the relative innocence of the boy, in contrast to the murky and impenetrable swirling background surrounding him like a maelstrom. The somewhat stunned or stupefied expression denoted the moment when his attention was caught, and he stared straight ahead as if confronting the viewers; a moment of a sudden turn of events.

Stare, oil on canvas, 24x30, 2022
Stare
Oil on Canvas
24” x 30”
Completed in 2022

This painting was published in February 2024 by Artistonish, Issue 43.

Disquieting Coda – “Postscript”

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2020 was such a distressing year that we all hoped to close the page in earnest. Yet, when almost halfway into 2021, we are still fighting to escape from the dark shadow 2020 cast, constantly adjusting or expanding our traumatic memories, by generating sobering Postscript, which was the title of my new self-portrait, recording such an emotional journey of mine in that eventual year and beyond.

Postscript - 後記 - Nachtrag
Postscript
28” x 22”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2021

Postscript was published by Artistonish, Issue 8, March 2021

Featured Oil Painting “Upstream”

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Last week, I shipped to Seattle my 2008 oil painting, Upstream, which has been selected for the juried show, 2014 Evergreen Association of Fine Arts (EAFA) Open Exhibition, at EAFA Gallery in the Seattle Design Center (5701 Sixth Avenue South, Suite P292, Seattle, WA 98108).

This modest painting, measured 24″ by 18″, semi-abstract in style, clearly influenced by Chinese ink painting, depicts a fish or two struggles to swim upstream, against the current.  It is fitting for the painting to travel to Seattle, because it was in that city when I witnessed an amazing salmon run in Chittenden Locks Fish Ladder several years ago.

Upstream / 逆流 / Gegen den Strom, Oil on Canvas, 24" x 18", Completed in 2008
Upstream
oil on canvas, 24″x18″, 2008

This painting was not a frank documentation of that fish ladder scene; rather, when I painted it, I was trying to capture a free spirit, a spirit to overcome adversaries.  I deliberated chose a black and white color scheme, and a bold, almost abstract outline, as I was mostly interested in something elemental, less representational.

This work surely has a charmed life and earned a fair bit of recognitions – in 2009, it was published in The William and Mary Review by The College of William and Mary, Virginia, Volume 47.