Giorgio Morandi and now George Shaw

Sometimes one comes to a point of life, you look back and regret.

You don't want to admit it but you have to be brave and be honest to yourself. I know some suggest that we should not regret because we cannot change the past, but the present. I find this argument lame. To regret doesn't necessarily mean we have to live in the shadow of the past. It's precisely the knowledge of the past that teaches us how to live our present. Besides, the most noble thing a human being possess is the ability to regret – the confirmation of the existence of our free will. We can choose, therefore there is always the possibility of another path, for better or worse. Then you can say to yourself: okay, I've been a jerk, should I continue to be a dumber jerk, or CHANGE to be a smarter one? There due comes the possibility of a fresh start, to be the person you always want to be, to do the things you always want to do, or should have done.

This is the profound thought I'm having at the moment.

Crossing, 1996, 30" x 39", Oil on canvas

On Way Home, 1996, 30" x 38", Oil on canvas

Let's rewind to thirteen years ago, to the time when I graduated from my art+design course. I showed four paintings on my final year degree show (didn't really learn any "useful" skills on design). They depicted street scenes of London at night. But looking closely, they are paintings of light – how street lamps or building lights illuminated the surroundings. The "chiaroscuro", you can say. All of them were real places I frequented between home and school. As I walked by everyday, the familiar scene looked stranger and stranger to me. I saw some invisible presence of something there. I am confused now whether it's the old masters or just me calling it "the vision". Whatever the term is, it's not as mysterious as it sounds. I believe all serious painters (and art practitioners) are familiar with it. Indeed it's the cornerstone of all creative endeavours. I painted or designed shit if I don't have it.

Pass Over, 1996, 30" x 38", Oil on canvas

The First, 1996, 30" x 38", Oil on canvas

The paintings were well received. It surprised me as initially no tutor fancied my realistic painting style. (Actually not many bothered to paint those days. Some even announced "painting is dead" in the art world.) I thought I did ok. I was a self-doubt (still am sometimes) Chinky in a foreign land, intimidated by the high and loud "exhibitionist" arts driven by the YBAs (Young British Artists, it's 1996, at the high of the tide). I ended art school somewhat disillusioned.

My best mate Steve, a student from Newcastle, said to me when I couldn't get a work-permit and had to go back to Hong Kong, "You are a fxxking good painter, you know man? Don't ever never stop painting!" His funny Geordie accent still rings in my ears.

But I stopped. I decided the only natural survival path is to get a design related job and make a living. And the rest is history. (Don't get me wrong. I love my job. Just a pity I didn't paint all along.)

Eventually the small voice inside me got his reward. About a year ago, I picked up my paintbrush again. But it's all a bit of stop-start. During the weekends, it's impossible not to find more "interesting", easier things to do than waiting for the "right mood", sorting out the subject matters, setting up the easel... oh just a minute, the Premier League matches is on the telly.

Geroge Shaw, Ash Wednesday: 8.30am (2004-5). Humbrol enamel on board

Geroge Shaw, Scenes from the Passion: Late  2002. Humbrol enamel on board

So it goes until one day, I was doing one of my favorite pastime – magazine-hopping in a book store. I picked up an Art World (an art magazine, any metaphor or irony here, I don't know.) I saw the works of a painter I've never heard of – George Shaw. I was shocked. Just like when I first discovered Giorgio Morandi. It's like I painted them myself, only suffering from memory lost. Or like a replica of me continued my unfinished canvases, quietly in a corner of England.

The more I read into it, the more I found our similarities. He felt the same disillusion when graduated from Sheffield Polytechnic before started to paint again in his MA at Royal College of Art in London, and would you believe it, in the year of 1996! I certainly share his sentiment in depicting unpopulated scenes of Tile Hill where he grew up, though the motive is different. His is one of remembering, the lost passions of youth. Mine was the visualization of a presence, between the physical and little beyond.

Without any warning, all the loveliness, passion and meanings of what it takes to paint rushed back to me. What was barren, now flooded. I was immersing myself in these nostalgia of empty streets of Camberwell, lights in the dark of Elephant and Castle, typical yellow brick houses of England, and most of all, the very act of putting paints on a canvas. It's poignantly sweet.

Of course, feeling comes and goes. A little healthy self-indulgence here has no value to me if it doesn't turn to some concrete actions.

Every good painter knows when to stop and call the work finished. Excuse me for this overdone self-retrospective. I'll end here by saying:
Let's not be afraid to admit our past stupidities, just make sure we regret lesser as we get older. When we are driving ahead, it would be foolish and even fatal not to look at the rear-view mirror, wouldn't it?

And my canvases are calling.