克城消息    

克城台灣畫家美術展Artists Speak

TED 和他的畫

Sharon Yang

    I like to sing and cook, but never thought I could paint. When my kids were all grown up, my husband encouraged me to start painting. I had a lot of fun painting, but never thought my works of art would be in a show someday. This is the first time I was invited, and I feel honored. I have two paintings of Taiwanese egrets here. They are part of my childhood experiences in my homeland, Taiwan. I have many fond memories of these birds flying across the field, resting by the bank of little streams, or just standing on the tree branches. I like them a lot because they have many beautiful postures and expressive motions.
    For these two paintings, the most challenging part was creating the mood of the subject. These two pictures both include adult birds, their babies, and their homes. In both of my paintings, I have a few things I’d like to draw your attention to. In “Tender Care,” you can see three hungry babies eager for their early morning breakfast while their parent rushes back to meet their need. I specifically chose vibrant green and yellow to bring out the liveliness of the scene. You will also notice that the design of this painting is not symmetrical because I wanted to highlight the energy and motion of the parent arriving. In addition, if you look at the nest, you will see the detail and care that the parents put into the strong structure.
For the next picture, I chose a dark bluish-purple background to show the calmness and tranquility of the evening home. In contrast to the action of the first painting, this one emphasizes the still intimacy of the family relationship. I placed an emphasis on centeredness and roundness in the design because I wanted to convey a sense of unity.
I learned a lot from both of these paintings including technique, design, and how to create a tone. These birds have truly challenged me to expand my imagination, and I hope you enjoy them.

Sibyl Tien

    In order to talk about what inspired me to do Chinese Brush Painting; I have to go back to those days when I was still a teenager. When I was a teenager, I remembered watching my father laying out the rice paper on the table, taking his time grinding the ink stone, and dabbing Chinese painting brushes in bowls of different painting color when he was trying to construct a painting in his mind. It appeared to me that my father was enjoying himself once he started working on a painting project during his time of leisure. I told myself then that I would one day start learning Chinese Brush Painting as soon as I had more free time. Little did I know what I called “free time” never came until about fifty years later.
     I have to thank Anna Hsu for inviting me to join her in the Chinese Brush Painting class at the Chinese Academy of Cleveland after I retired from my routine office work. At that time Mrs. Wu, our teacher, would show us some of her own paintings at the beginning of each class and then she would ask us to try to do a painting by more or less copying from one of her painting samples.
     My way of painting got changed when I started having Mitzi Lai as my painting instructor. Mitzi always first asked her students to study the painting subjects very carefully before laying down their painting brushes on the paper. This was very frustrating for me at the beginning. My work usually couldn’t reflect the true color or the three dimensional look of the live subjects and my wrist couldn’t work as a friction-free ball bearing as I was told how it should work. As time went on, I did get a great sense of happiness and satisfaction when I could eventually finish a painting that I liked. I certainly would like to thank Mitzi for reminding me to have keen eyes for observation and for letting myself be free when I paint.
    There is a Chinese saying which goes like this: “There are no limited boundaries for learning”. This is so true when I apply this Chinese saying to my painting experience. There will always be something new for me to learn every day. The good thing about keeping on learning is that it makes me not realize the coming of my old age and it also helps my heart stay young. I have also found out that whenever I started working on a painting project, my mind became so focused that there would be no room for stress or worries. Consider so many good things generated from painting, I think I’ll continue my interest in learning painting for a long, long time.