Father, oil on canvas board, 14 x 18 in., February, 2023Me, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in, January 2023
A few notes:
The watercolors were originally painted a couple of years ago, but I did some major revisions this year before the shows. I have yet to figure out how to date works like these.
The experiment of revising past works gave me a lot of ideas. Some of the old paintings may find a new life, and some of the creating processes may never end!
The portraits are the first time I entered my oil paintings to a show. They both received “Honorable Mention.”
I feel lucky that the “Portrait” is an online show, because none of the pieces I entered is completely dry. Northern California was darn wet this past winter!
I am not a particular fan of insects, but the sound of cicadas is a constant in my childhood memory. Summer time in Beijing when the city was still haze free, kids with long bamboo sticks were searching for cicadas in the canopies of trees. The molt makes good ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine, probably for treating cold. When I first saw the picture of a blue cicada I was delightfully surprised. I never knew cicada could be this pretty. The ones we had in Beijing were black and brown. Yet, we all romanticize our memory, don’t we?
“Summer Dream,” which currently on view at the Pacific Art League gallery, was inspired by two of my previous pieces. The design came from “Marching” (not obvious, I know, long story still developing), while the color theme “Landscape.”
Summer Dream, acrylic on canvas, 22 x 28 in, 2021
By the way, naming the artwork is probably the hardest part of the creative process, at least for me. While “Sing” may be self-evident, it was still an afterthought. As for “Summer Dream,” hehe, I grabbed it out of nowhere the minute before submitting it for the show, and had to check the register sheet to remember what it was when I brought the artwork in. 😂
California watercolor artist Mike Bailey once said in his workshop that artists should keep going back to their old works and find inspiration there. In the past, that’s something I rarely did. My own works used to make me sad. If they are good, I feel like I haven’t made any progress, and if they are bad, I am bad. Last year when I started my social media presence: this blog and my Instagram, I managed to go through some of what I had done with Mike’s words in mind. It took some getting used to, but after many self-pitying moments, I saw sparks. There are things that generate ideas, things that remind me of techniques I learned and forgot, and things I simply want to re-do.
One of the sparks is an old abstract acrylic painting “Waterfall”, a design still excited me:
Landscape, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30
I kept the design, but drifted away from the primary colors and brought in the fluidity of the watercolor medium. Here’s the new version:
Waterfall 2, watercolor on paper, 22 x 28 in, 2020
Earlier this month I also submitted a self-portrait to Art Room Gallery’s Portrait Show, and received an “Honorable Mention.” Here’s the artwork:
Decision, watercolor on paper, 9 x 13 in, 2021
As I mentioned before I have been focusing on portrait this year. Though techniques are still my major concern, and I understand it takes far more than the a few months to grasp it, I do often think about if I could go deeper than just the face. “Decision” is an attempt to bring out a bit of the inner world of the subject.
I recently became a member of the Pacific Art League and joined their 99th Anniversary Exhibit, “Beyond 2020.” My painting “Sail” was selected into the gallery show, and will be on view at their Palo Alto gallery till January 2021. Here’s the piece:
Sail, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 in, 2019
The painting was inspired by a still life study I did before:
Still life, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 in, 2019
My still life study was focused on how to paint white with color, but I found the way the lines curved, meandered and crossed very intriguing. After the painting was done, I kept looking at it and tried to follow those lines in my mind and in my sketchbook. The objects gradually disappeared and the lines and shapes led me to new ideas, and eventually, a new painting.
I recently submitted a couple of artworks to an online exhibition “Patterns” at Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery. One of the submissions received an honorable mention and was selected into Top 15 Artists in the “Painting & Other Media category.”
This is the painting that received the recognition:
Marching, watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 in, 2019
I also submitted one to a different category, “Photography and Digital.” I don’t really have any experience with digital art. I took a watercolor doodle and manipulated it in Photoshop Express and Procreate. It failed to enter the show, understandably, but I had a lot of fun making it:
Bubbly Dance, digital, 2020
Maybe I’ll make a carpet out of it some day!
I am taking a 2D design class this fall and learning some basics about Photoshop. Hopefully I will have some better stuffs to submit next time! 🙂
Light, Space & Time has online exhibitions of various themes and it is cheap to enter. Highly recommend for emerging artists.
ZHI SU 