"What Do You See?" (2019)

December 2019

Full View

What Do You See?, 24” x 48”, 2019, acrylic on canvas:

What Do You See?

Detailes

What Do You See? Detail 1

What Do You See? Detail 2

What Do You See? Detail 3

Artist Statement

I named this work as “What do you see?” Thus, I recommend you to spend enough time watching the canvas carefully then turn to my statement, because I do not want to break the beauty of imagination or narrow the space of association.

If some of you are already familiar with me, you may have got a sort of sense of how I look like. I am versatile, complex and complicated. From my own perspective, my art works always lead to blood, death, sexuality, exposure, loneliness, darkness, boldness, enthusiasm, repression, instinct, nature, distortion, new birth, being alive...

Therefore, through this work, I would like to draw some attention to life, birth, death, blood, darkness, liveliness, time, freshness and insanity. I am kind of moody, even sometimes I think I am of a multiple personality. Thus, when I do a painting, I really enjoy the different ways I paint with my brushes or something else with different moods at different moments, or even with different personalities and different “myselfs”. That sounds really crazy, but I am so willing to express this kind of craziness, either in a direct expressive way or through some metaphors with detailed hints. I would like to leave much freedom for my audience to criticise, and to think about my works at their own pace. This is such a pleasure to me.

I applied paints with acrylic primer using foam brushes and make flows, which was a really enjoyable experience doing so. I did some dripping, and made some hand prints with other strange prints on the canvas. As you can see, I am always keen on mark-making. I made lots of various marks, which somewhere you may find it even causing physical discomfort. I consciously chose the colour of underpainting, red and blue, which creates dark purple in order to create the sense of bloodiness. I also left many meaningful hints in the contents, but “what are they?” “what do you see?” “what do you think of them?” “how would you like to interpret?” are questions for you, which I would better not interfere too much or directly give you my own answers. Actually, I should have not used the word “answer”, because “answer” does ruin the infinite charm of art.

Making Process

What Do You See? In Process 1

What Do You See? In Process 2

What Do You See? In Process 3