Hot on the heels of Four Paintings of Mine Published by Superstition Review's publication of my four paintings a day ago, Pomona Valley Review, Issue 7 was published by California State Polytechnic University Pomona, which also features two Paintings and an installation of mine. The seventh issue of the magazine - mine works can be seen on pages 10, 63 and 76, and page 150, one may read a short bio of mine. More of my published works can be seen here: Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst... [more]
Four paintings of mine were just published by Superstition Review, Issue 11 in April 2013. Superstition Review, published by Arizona State University, is an "online literary magazine produced by creative writing and web design students at Arizona State University. Founded by Patricia Colleen Murphy in 2008, the mission of the journal is to promote contemporary art and literature by providing a free, easy-to-navigate, high quality online publication that features work by established and emerging... [more]
Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAM) (Paris City Museum of Modern Art), is less talked about than other institutions in Paris, such as Musée du Louvre or Musée d'Orsay. But, a rich city as Paris has much to offer and even its "lesser" museum could be a treasure trove and MAM is just one of such wonderful museums. I stumbled upon this museum when I wandered about the city alone in 2008, and beside an amazing special exhibit which lured me in, I was very happy to see many wonderful pe... [more]
Time to time, I feel the impulse to focus on a particular painting, to tell my viewers what was the story behind, such as "Progression", "Dissonance", "Liberation Road" and "The Song of Orpheus", all of them I had made video presentations to give views of these works from multiple angles. "Black Woods" video below, however, demonstrated the progress of this semi-representational and I hope that seeing the process of layers of upon applied upon layers prove interesting, at least not boring for my viewers. Video Presentation of Black Woods (2010): ... [more]
My watershed year was 2003, when I started my Apocalypse Series of paintings and drawings, when the US was poised to invade Iraq and I made several dark paintings such as "The Triumph of Saint George". In 2004 and 2005, I continued my effort but 2004 was an obvious recovering year, from deep emotions and 2005 was the year I tried to function as a "normal" person, less disturbed and angry. My works were less disturbing and less controversial, with more resigned sadness: 2004:
ww... [more]
ArtSlant, a prominent Contemporary Art Network with worldwide arts calendars, artists, reviews and online art sales of originals and prints.
I have been associated with this wonderful website for a while and have been recognized several times with Showcase Awards, for my paintings and a drawing.
Recently, ArtSlant contacted me to include me in their Watchlist and presto, my feature was posted on ArtSlant's News & Buzz section:
The three paintings they posted are a still life, an... [more]
Continuing my archiving practice, I'm posting video recapitulations of paintings I completed in 2006 through 2008, in three videos below. Those three years were years of experimenting and re-aligning, after several intense years of creativity, fueled by the emotions stirred up by the dark time and reality - the period George W. Bush invaded Iraq and suppressed civil liberty at home, a period and political situation reminded me cruelly of the repressive China I fled from. When emotions had been dulle... [more]
While working on two of my large paintings and a more intimate one, I utilized my down time to work on some drawings, which though smaller-scaled, provide different kind of challenge and satisfaction. Boy in Venice, Charcoal on Paper Grand Canal, Venice, Colored Ink on Paper A Young Man in Padua, Charcoal on Paper Viennese Boy, Museum Goer, Crayon on Paper All these images were based on sketches and photographs I took last year when I traveled in Austria and Italy. Traveling is really... [more]
Art Museums in Paris are far more than just the Louvre and d'Orsay and I was delighted to discover more and more during my second visit to Paris in 2008. Not far from d'Orsay, crossing the Seine through Pont Alexandre III, I arrived at a little gem, Petit Palais (Little Palace), which was showcasing Goya's cycle of "Disaster of War", monumental and deeply moving. However, I'll stick to my rule, and discuss in my blog only the permanent collections of the museum. Under its ornate dome, the w... [more]
When I visited Paris for the first time in 2000, Musée de l'Orangerie was closed for renovation, therefore I missed the chance to see the large assemble of Claude Monet's Les Nymphéas (Water Lilies). Eight years later, when I returned, I was delighted to bask in the glory in those two oval-shaped rooms, especially built to showcase this "series" Musée de l'Orangerie collected. According to Wikipedia, "Water Lilies (or Nymphéas) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1... [more]
2012 was a very difficult year for me, full of tragedy and sadness and my art make sometimes had to be pushed back and I was only manage to finish small canvasses - several larger, more ambitious one took much more patience and stamina than I was able to muster last year. I made a series based on Greek tragedies, on the theme of Electra, Orestes, Paris, Helen and Oedipus. Another two noteworthy portraits I made last year both had religious touches - Heavenwards and Icon, made at the beginning and end of the tumultous year. Below is a video pr... [more]
My day trip to Antwerp, after the Cathedral of Our Lady, where we saw amazing Rubens panels, included Rubens' House and the grandc (Antwerp Royal Museum of Fine Arts), which boasted some masterpiece paintings of several centuries. My favorite painting in this museum was a fifteen century painting, Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim, a stylish, otherworldly, actually very strange presentation of the Virgin, the Child and some strangely devilish red Seraphim, juxtaposed with equally sinis... [more]
We had only a day trip to Antwerp, whose art scene was dominated by the great Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. In one of several stops, the Cathedral of Our Lady (De Kathedraal), we saw several of his great panels. Most ambitiously conceived and marvelously executed were two triptychs, which were my favorites in this great house of worship and temple of art. Both triptychs depicted the crucial moment of Jesus's life cycle - The Elevation of the Cross (1610) and The Descent from the Cross (161... [more]
Bruges, Belgium, so-called Bruges-la-Morte, according to the novelist Georges Rodenbach, in reality was nothing but dead, particularly during its commercial height several hundreds years ago, when it was one of the most vibrant and presperous cities in the world. It was during those golden years, Bruges acquired one of its most valuable treasures - a marble statue of Virgin and the Child by no other than Michelangelo, a centerpiece of the great cathedral of the city - Church of Our Lady, or O... [more]
The St Johns Hospital in Bruges, Belgium (Sint-Janhospitaal, Memlingmuseum, Brugge), hosted the The Memling Museum, where six paintings by the 15th century painter Hans Memling can be seen. The oldest known document with rules for the hospital dates from 1188 and the oldest part of the building (ward) below dated back to 13th century. Hans Memling (also spelled Memlinc; c. 1430 - 11 August 1494) was born as Jan van Mimnelinghe in Seiligenstadt (located on the river Maine in Germany) and bec... [more]
Bruges, Belgium was glittering jewel since medieval time and though its commercial activities has largely subsided, its glories can be seen from every corner of its old city, particularly in its rich museums. The most important museum in Bruges is Groeninge Museum, which boasts some very fine examples of Flemish Primitive paintings, such as those by Jan van Eyck, which present in Bruges was like that of Botticelli in Florence, Italy. To modern eyes, the elaborately wrought paints by Van Eyck... [more]
In Den Haag, beside the estimable Mauritshuis, I also made a stop at a smaller museum - Prince William V Gallery (Galerij Prins Willem V). The Prince William V Gallery was the first public collection of paintings in the Netherlands dating back to 1774. It showcased the eighteenth-century painting collection of the Stadholder William V, Prince of Orange-Nassau (1748-1806), in its original setting of long and high-ceilinged room, cramped from top to bottom of the walls. Many of the highli... [more]
In recent years, the main fine art museum in the Dutch capital city of Den Haag, gained additional renown for one of its particular painting - The Young Girl with Turban, a.k.a. Girl with a pearl earring, by Johannes Vermeer.The Young Girl with Turban (Girl with a pearl earring) c. 1665, 44.5 x 39 cm, Johannes Vermeer This painting, portraying a very young girl at the threshold of womanhood, half-turning her head and gazed at the viewers, in a state of irresolute, hesitating, seductive and seduced, i... [more]
Rottderdam in Netherlands had a wonderful art museum - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, whose collections far surpassed my expectations, fresh after my stay at Amsterdam, where Rembrandt and Van Gogh were amongst the highlights in its world renown museums.Since Rotterdam, two relatively small paintings haunted me ever since. The first was one of the several versions of The Tower of Babel, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The tower of Babel c. 1565, Oil on Panel, 59.9 x 74.6 cmPieter Bruegel the E... [more]
The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem naturally had quite a few paintings by this Dutch master. However, his paintings collected there were of sombre kind, unlike those more typical earthy figures of his such as The Laughing Cavalier in the Wallace Collection in London. His paintings here were often group portraits of gloom looking men, sitting in rigid rows, in great contrast to Rembrandt's ground-breaking group painting, The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, aka The Night Watch. I yearne... [more]
Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam hosted numerous paintings by the great modern Dutch master, Vincent Van Gogh, from iconic ones to the somewhat lesser known though not minor ones. After some difficult dideliberation, I chose below two paintings as my favorites.The first one, Wheatfield with Crow, was a well known one, if not universally loves as his Irises or Starry Night. This painting, painted near the end of Van Gogh's life, was a pictorial cry of unmitigatable despair and looming doom, albeit a... [more]
Six years ago, when I visited the great city Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum was under renovation - it is set to re-open on 13 April 2013 after almost ten years's effort. Mercifully, the museum put the cream of its collections to a wing and I was able to see some of the amazing works, amongst them, my Favorite Paintings are one Vermeer and one Rembrandt. No surprise here. To me, The Milkmaid or The Kitchen Maid by Johannes Vermeer, a tranquil domestic scene, was one of the most beautiful and encha... [more]
The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge was the last major museum I visited in the United Kingdom in 2006. It was founded in 1816 and is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. Naturally, an institution as ancient as this would have amazing collections and my expectation was fully met. Yet, amongst its endless arrays of antiquities from all corners of the world, and paintings by many great masters, I was most affected by a very small monochromatic painting, titled Agnes (bel... [more]
In my previous reporting in this series, I cited two paintings I liked most in Tate Modern, London. Tate Modern is part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. Tate Britain was the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897 and houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner. Turner is one of my favorite artists and amongst many of his masterpieces collected there, I loved this one below most: Snow Storm - Steam-Bo... [more]
The transformation from a former power plant to a one of the flashest galleries in the world, Tate Modern Gallery, along with d'Orsay in Paris, set forth an example of how to re-juvenile a blighted institution and a neighborhood. The vast space was well utilized to showcase many huge sculptures and installations. However, the works intrigued me most are paintings - one was Image of the Fish God (1956) by Alan Davie (born 1920) and the other one was Large Black Landscape (1946) by Jean Dubuff... [more]
London's museum and galleries are astonishingly rich, way beyond the most prominent the British Museum and the National Gallery. The somewhat lesser known gallery, the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House, London, had a rich collections of Renaissance, Baroque, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and 20th Century works, many of them iconic. My favorite paintings there were seminal ones - one was A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1881-2, by Edouard Manet, and was dated as 1882; and the other one was... [more]
The Wallace Collection in London was a marvelous museum boasting many superb old master and impressive French 18th century paintings, plus decorative art and a world class armory. Comparing to the British Museum or the National Gallery, both huge institutions in London, it was much smaller but the reward was just as great. There were so many paintings to like there and I name these two as my favorites there: 1) The Laughing Cavalier by the Dutch painter Frans Hals (1582-1666) and 2) Voul... [more]
Whenever I think of the National Portrait Gallery in London, I remember those fantastic characters from the Tudor Dynasty. The Tudor portraits, some of them copies of paintings by more famous artists, such as Holbein, were definitely the crown jewels of the esteemed institution; however, their artistic merits were overshadowed or overwhelmed by historical values and societal trappings - stiff fabrics and ornate jewels, etc. Though the characters did emerge under these heavy armors, they were oft... [more]
As I mentioned before, comparing to the wonderful painting collections in the National Gallery, the British Museum in London was instead famous for its amazing antiquities - covering the vast span from far east, Asia Minor, to the cradle of the western civilization - Greece. In order to name just two wonderful objects from the British Museum, I had to overlook many marvels such as the Rosette Stone, a modest sized stone with same inscriptions in several ancient languages, therefore the key to t... [more]
In 2004, I visited several art capitals in the western Europe - London, Amsterdam, Den Haag (The Hague), Rotterdam, Brugge (Bruges), and Antwerpen (Antwerp). The great London was rich with art collections and looking back now, I marvel at the stamina and my strategic planning so essential for so many museum and gallery visits in mere three weeks, considering I wasn't there for visual art alone. I also saw three plays in London, visited Stonehenge and wonderful Roman ruin in the Georgian city... [more]
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