The sea of greed. My message behind my art:

In my early years as a painter I’ve had extensive study over Aquatics as my master specialty subject. In China the fish is a symbol of prosperity due to the large amounts of offspring a fish can produce. The word fish has similar sound tones to the word abundance therefore fish is a subject that is loved by businessmen and merchants.

Most masters in the past trained in the same subject to get a focus on the ideas,behavior and environment the subject to breath life into the creatures painted. In my studies i did Koi carp for 5 years non stop and owned fish as a pet to sustain my inspiration towards fish. This worked as a double edge sword for me. I was very well versed in my fish paintings but i lacked ability to become a unique artist. I Then decided to learn to paint with a contemporary touch to my work and used symbolism and gestures to bridge this gap between my art being more than just a pretty picture. I also decided to give messages to my work. So later i discovered techniques to paint sharks, whales, and snapper.  I saw the reasoning and ideas behind shark finning and whaling and mass farming in snapper catches. This all lead to my conclusion to human greed and suggested  the real sharks being humans from a social view. We all seem to greed for money even if it means bloodshed is the main sources for it.  Like the sharks we end up eating each other and attack each other to get the most money, We become out of control. Our greed has allowed us to kill whales and snapper and hunt them to extinction. Here are some photos to my sea of greed collection. Hope this poetic abstract resonates with people around the world. for more photos please click on my link https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.734609603249544.1073741863.352752924768549&type=1 and remember to like page to get latest updates.

 

Chinese painting , Traditional or not?

Sometimes i always wondered if i was painting the right way. I always wondered if the way i was looking at mountains reflect the way of my ancestors. If they see what i see. Do we see blue mountains in the distance with sky colors and reddish purples with the trees that are close. But then i had a thought, most in the past all paint from the top of their heads after a travel. They don’t have photos or Internet or even game environments to test things out virtually. So i guess with reference images i do have the upper hand, but i do lack travel so most of the time i end up on my computer.

Technique wise in the past all the paintings with the calligraphy brush alway uses the tip to create lines first before shape. i have been using the side of the brush to create depth and gradients. I feel that the old techniques are a bit to repetitive and lacks spontaneity. Then i have to say moving on to birds and other creatures the old painters do have the upper hand. They can stare at a pond all day for the last five years of their lives and never get bored. Where as with us, we get bored so easily, we can never capture the essence of the character and movements of the animals painted.

 

Lotus freedom

How I love putting art work in the corner. Canvas provides more volume than scrolls, they re-define the edges of the painting and lighten up the colours on the surface of the wall. The trick to this is keeping the composition simple and select the right colours that contrast with the ink. Name: Lotus freedom The generous white space defined by the lotus provides extra movement in a small piece, that have two fish swimming towards each other. The jade greens provide harmony and the reds extrude with power, allowing freedom of colours to work together as one.

New paper post for Hua ye Chinese newspaper in New Zealand

 Well I did a lot of posting for the Chinese newspaper last year. Here are some samples of my work