“Spatial Melody"

I have been composing a piece of visual music on this canvas. So I name this painting "Spatial Melody". You might be curious what are those tinker thingies and why they are hanging there. I did not arrange this set of still lives myself. I painted this from a photo I took in September when I visited a cloisonné factory in Beijing. The workers hang their parts on the the wall semi randomly. They form beautiful patterns naturally without too much human intentions. I snapped a few images and know I will paint them some day. To be honest with you, I am not a very creative person. I tend to "discover" things rather than "inventing".  In other words, I consider the world is all ready perfect. There is no need to create "better" stuff. We only need to do is to remove our ignorance and see better.

I plan to send this piece to 2016 OPA. Please wish me luck.

"Pavilion in Summer Palace (Day 6)"

Do you still remember this painting? I have mentioned that I was in the "mid painting crisis". So I put it aside and got busy of teaching my workshop at Austin. Now the workshop is over. I came back to it. I spent two more days following my intuition to improve it. I don't know if I have brought this painting to fruition, but I decided to call it done. I still have a lot of thinking about the issues with it, but somehow I found it so difficult to put more brush strokes on it.

The "mid painting crisis" makes me think about my entire art career. I am no longer feel that emotionally enthusiastic about my paintings like a few years ago. My friends, having followed my art for so long, you should feel tired of my dark background still life paintings by now. A style of painting is like a delicacy on the dinner table. No matter how delicious it maybe, if you eat too much of it or eat the same dish everyday, you will feel tired of it. My art has entered into a relatively quiet time. It is quite normal. There will be more time to think. Think as an ordinary human on how to make living, how to pay our debt, and how to make the family happy. I have chose this journey voluntarily. So I will keep on cultivating. Cultivating persistently, and do not think about harvesting too much.

"Evening Tea" --- Sold

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I think I have finished this painting project. I have changed the title to "Evening Tea", reminding me the time I was in my retreat. We had no dinners during that period of time. We only drank tea in the evenings. Tasting the subtle flavor of a simple cup of tea with a calmed mind, watching the cool breeze rattling the wild flowers under the warm dusk sun light. Everything was so peaceful and sensational.

This painting is one of my most involved ones. I have put utmost of my effort to push the limit. I know I am no Richard Schmid, nor David Leffel, but I have being trying my best to bring the quality as high as possible. It is very significant in my career in fine art. I want to hear your comments. Thank you for helping to grow.

"Metal World (Day 3)"

First of all, I want to thank sooooo many friends wishing me happy birthday. Various kinds birthday cakes have overwhelmed my FB. Someday I will do a birthday cake painting. I should have more than enough reference photos. Thank you for making my life so sweet.

So far for how this painting goes, I think I have exhausted all I know about painting. Now I have entered my "pushing envelope" stage. Obviously, I will get more details on the white cup in the front and I will add more stuff in the foreground. The painting will naturally move into a more realistic look. That is not the direction I want to go. I want to keep the painting painterly, but offer more dramatic effects. Let's keep on going.

"Metal World (Day 2)"

When I was meditating in my retreat last week, I thought about my art. This a couple of years, I have been traveling, teaching, learning how to manage business, and trying to make ends meet. I did many small paintings and demoing significantly. The market is not bad, and my family and I are surviving in this tough world. However, what I really want to do is painting some serious paintings. I did some before, but they are sitting in the galleries and not moving. As a practical person, I concern about the market. Can I really afford to do this? On the other hand as a late starter and serious about progress, I should not be satisfied with a mediocre accomplishment. I need to aim higher. Even this kind of painting may not selling, but I  will learn significantly, and I will not regret what I did in this life. Just like this meditation retreat. I may meditate in my house for 1 or 2 hours. Why bother using 10 days very valuable time going through 10 hours of agony everyday? Now my experience has told me. the effort is very well deserved. I am entering a new dimension.

Yesterday, I started this serious painting project. This painting is 16" x 20". I will work on this one for several days. I want to push as many envelopes as possible, using utmost what I know, and explore whatever unknowns, and document my journey. If you have suggestions, please let me know. I appreciate greatly you help me to grow.

"AAU Figure Painting 4 (Day 1)"

Shhhhhhhh! Please do not tell Zhaoming and AAU that I am running away from school. In a couple of hours I will be on the plane to the east coast. Now, I am pretty tired on painting figure. I want to go back to what I feel comfortable with......Ha Ha I am just kidding.

Well. I am not completely kidding. I will teach two workshop next week in New England, and will be back to San Francisco after that. I will miss a week of class. Well my study at AAU is not perfect, but I feel very satisfied with what I got.

Today we started a new figure painting. It was planned as a 3-day project, but I only have today to do it. This is what I got so far. I may work from photo after I come back.

"Figure Study 051112"

Figure painting is my final goal in my relatively new art career. As a matter of fact, I started painting about 15 years ago, my genre was portrait and figure. I realized very quickly the figure is the most difficult thing to paint. I don't have much time, so I move to still life. I think I did the right thing, because I get to artistic part of painting very quickly instead of struggling with anatomy and perspectives. Many years have passed, and now it is time to confronting figure painting again. In order to progress in a more controlled way, I thought about technology again. This figure study I did was not from a model neither from a photo.  It was painted from a 3D computer model. I downloaded a 3D human model software from www.cloudstarts.com. The model is not perfect, but it is good enough. I got the proportion and perspective rather accurately with a lot of measurement. But I feel the form is very hard because I have not done enough and I don't know anatomy much. It is first time I painted collar bones in detail. I was really tired after about 4 hours. I know the shoulder still needs a lot of work, and so do arms, hands, legs and feet. Well, I will reserve them for my future projects.

"Fruit Conversation"

This is the second 16" x 20" I did in Northern California. My friend Fongwei has many beautiful bronze props.  I enjoyed so much painting them. The subtle greenish color really enhances the dark purple of grapes. Plus the warm orange color of the tangerines, I feel I have heard the chatting among those fruit friends. Similarly I enjoy chatting with you all on the Internet. I am the small grape on the table top.

"The Song of Silence"

Painting still life when moving constantly. It sounds really oxymoron. Well that is my life now, and it will be like this for a while probably. I am learning to adapt this new life. Currently, I am staying with my friend Fongwei Liu in northern California. This is a painting I did in Liu’s studio. I spent two days on this 16” x 20” and plan to send this painting to a gallery.  It feels so good painting together with a good artist. Painting large is very different from painting small paintings. I feel happy I am able to do some gallery level paintings when I am traveling. So I gave a oxymoron title for my today’s painting as well.

"Taigu"

I have been doing many small paintings. Painting larger is not my cup of tea. Now, since I am painting more seriously,  I must do more larger paintings. This one is 16" x 20". It feels like a giant to me. I spent two days on it. It is totally different ball game. I had some hard time, make quite a few mistakes, and learned a lot.

I did this one from a photo. The place is a small town called "Taigu" in central China. Recently, China has been developed so fast. The economics is booming. You see new modern skyscrapers sprouting like bamboo shoots everywhere. However on the other hand, old buildings got demolished day by day. My previous visit of my home town was about two years ago. The area I used to play and go to school has been completely rebuild. "Completely" means I can't even find a single tree which I know before. When the bulldozer went across, thousands of years culture crumbled into dust. Very soon the scene showing on this paintings will be completely disappeared from this planet. I guess that is the motivation I want paint this one, and perhaps many more in the future. I plan to go back to China more in the future and do more plein air and maybe workshops in this kind of culture locations, before it goes away.