Richard Hawley’s Don’t Stare at the Sun

Good art makes us see something we normally don't.

Credit to director George Belfield.

Ride of Passage

Ride of Passage No. 1, Oil on board, 8"x10"

Ride of Passage No. 2, Oil on board, 8"x10"

to
the time we rode,
the path we trod,
the land we wasted,
the paradise we lost.

Of night and light and the half-light

Untitled, Oil on canvas, 8"x10"

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W. B. Yeast

Revelation No.2

Revelation No.2, Oil on canvas, 8"x10"

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind

Ode: Intimations of Immortality, X
William Wordsworth

George Shaw shortlisted for the Turner Prize

George Shaw, Scenes from The Passion: The Cop Shop (1999-2000)
Humbrol enamel on board

The nominees for this year's Turner Prize announced, they are Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw. I am excited by the news. Two years ago, I posted about my accidental encounter with Shaw's paintings and how they reignited my passion to paint again. And here you are, his seemingly conservative art has entered onto the big (if not the biggest) stage in the art world. I hope he can win it, for paintings, for people who still believe in paintings, for artists who keep true to themselves and ignore the hip and the glamourous of the mainstream while humbly dabbing paints and dirtying their pants.

a very small painting – no. 1

Shirinat, Oil on Canvas, 4.5cm x 4.5cm

if less is more,
small can be big,
like a whisper
"i love u."

Revelation No.1

Revelation No.1, Oil on Canvas, 8"x10"

Want, try, think, say, things.

Martin Creed, Work No. 338 THINGS, 2004

I don't know what I want to say, but, to try to say something, I think I want to try to think. I want to try to see what I think. I think trying is a big part of it, I think thinking is a big part of it, and I think wanting is a big part of it, but saying it is difficult, and I find saying trying and nearly always wanting. I want what I want to say to go without saying.

- Martin Creed

He said the thing I want to say but don't know how to say it.

On Growing Up

I saw it one day on a bus ride.
Under a flyover,
two miniature-like kids running over the forbidding bank
between two opposing roads.
That's it.
It's the picture.
The picture that froze in my mind.
Skipping thousands of reasons,
jumping hundreds of conclusions,
emitting and connecting trillions of nerve impulses or maybe
just one struck by lightning –
The picture of how we're growing up.

Philosophers vs Artists

I'm reading a book on noted philosophers down the years of Western civilization, from Thales of Miletus to W.V.O. Quine, this is my observation:

The philosophers ask: What is there?
The artists ask: What is not there?

I don't know how to say. I paint.

You can't miss this sight, if you go from Sogo to Time Square. On the street of transit between two busiest spots in Causeway Bay. There used to be the famous Japanese department store Mitsukoshi of the '80s and '90s. Then it was torn down and gone with time.

A badly designed hoarding was erected, with mindless assembled stock photo faces looking up in anticipation of yet another shopping arcade. "Feel it", "Sense it", "Live it", it says, as empty as the space that has prolonged its presence.

The construction should have been completed by now. But the first concrete is yet to be seen. Among the hustle and bustle of shoppers, it became an existence of its own. And our existence is never in question, never mind others', as long as the shops are open. Except one morning in 2007, a 60-meter crane fell, killed two and injured five. A ripple soon faded into normality.

I pass the site twice everyday, to and off work. I don't know when it started haunting me. Was it the loveliness of the little window opened to let the tree be? The vast yellowness of the vinyl covering and how the flood light made radiance of folds on it? Or simply, I looked up and saw a kitten also looking up, among other printed faces. It was the time my cat was dying.

There's sadness, seems also hope. There's demolition, but also construction. It's night but there's light. A trace of nature surviving in the tides of culture. A person's remembrance of the dead trying to go beyond the hoarding – the veil.

Then words stopped. Language failed. To speak the unspeakable.

The sign, the light and the other side (Part 2)

So it's a guessing game. Love, art, poetry, even the art of story-telling in novels and movies. An affair of seducing. A balance act between disclosure and cover-up.

I have this habit of always preying over everything that's happening to me, the street I'm walking on, the man who's sitting next to me in a cafe, the sky that's changing every seconds, hoping that I can perhaps, just perhaps, catch something extraordinary. But of course that's not very often. Most of our days (which consists most part of our life) are just plainly mundane. But from these exercises, something unexpected shows up, at first I cannot quite make sense of what it is. The longer and harder you look at things, the stranger and more beautiful they become. Like a window opens, and you peep into the secret and heart of what you see. It became a "vision", as I've said in other posts.

Maybe Nature is the same. She's hiding something from us. She want us to give time and attention to her. We must give before we take. That is the Natural Law. But our time is fast and limited. We have better things to be occupied. We seldom "see" anymore. We lost the ability to savour things. To "waste" our time on things or people by observing them, talking to them, discover the unfamiliar in things with which we thought we are familiar. So painting maybe just an excuse for me to "waste" my time seeing. (Much like we "waste" our time watching craps on TV as an excuse for doing nothing.) Since the wasting process has this end-product called painting, it can serve as a signpost to the thing itself. Just to say "hey, look at this, it's worth your second look (and thought)."

Having said that, of course a painter is never a passive courier of the "vision" which was bestowed on her/him. Art is personal.

The next day, as the little melodrama between the lovers dies down, anger is replaced with regret. The girl now feels sorry. "Why am I such a petty person? Can I be less egocentric and self-indulging. Why all the trouble when I can just tell my true intention straight away?"

I kind of feel the same. So I've said it, or I haven't?

The sign, the light and the other side (Part 1)

Finally, I finished my first serious painting in thirteen years. Titled "The sign, the light and the other side", 610 x 762 mm, Oil on canvas. As I pondered what I could say about it, my thought was quickly drawn into a dilemma before every little words were gathering and forming a queue.

To ask a painter to write about his/her own work, is to place s/he in a paradoxical situation. When one paints, s/he has picked a particular medium over others to express (or simply just to "put down") something s/he "sees", feels, thinks or whatever has in mind. That is the best way. To do it other way would be self-defeating or self-deflecting (if there's such a word).

In a relationship, a girl (mostly girls, agree?) has certain desire in mind that she wants her admirer to know, say having a romantic night out this weekend, or as trivial as noticing her new lipstick colour ("No, that's nothing trivial! it's bloody important!" You can almost hear her screams). The last thing she wants is to spell it out. Instead if her admirer can see through her mind, by her subtle moves and signs, apparent unrelated suggestions or just telepathy out of his wholehearted devotion to her (Yes they believe it exists!), that will be immensely satisfying. She has found the proof of his love.

But when all her maneuvers go unnoticed with every minute passing, she gets more and more agitated. How can my masterful Van Gogh get no appreciation? Doesn't my beholder see my beauty? Where is his attention on me? In the end, she can no longer contain her desire (and temper), and reveal the mystery (indeed the revelation comes in great enigmatic magnitude as its decibel).

"Oh, Darling, why didn't you just say so!" Her lover complains, doesn't realize he has asked one of the greatest philosophical question about love, and also art.

Sketches on iPhone

I have had my iPhone for few months now. And I've been playing with all these wonderful and useful apps ever since. But not until recently, it dawned on me that there should be one for drawing. It's like remembering there's such a thing called pen upon seeing papers. Couldn't be more obvious.

If we human came so long to click, drag and type on a piece of glass, how more primitive and imperative to just scribble with our index finger, albeit it's not steamed.

A search word "paint" brought me a dozen such kind of apps in the iTune store. I found MyPaint Free so far the best among the free ones. Simple and quick. So now my iPhone is also an "iPad". Sketch on the go. Few samples above.

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.

"...I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way."

It was one of those great spring days, it was Sunday, and you knew summer would be coming soon. And I remember that morning Dorrie and I had gone for a walk in the park and come back to the apartment. We were just sort of sitting around and I put on a record of Louie Armstrong, which was music I grew up with, and it was very, very pretty, and I happened to glance over and I saw Dorrie sitting there. And I remember thinking to myself how terrific she was and how much I loved her. And I don't know, I guess it was a combination of everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way.

Sandy Bates in "Stardust Memories", written by Woody Allen

I read this the other day and it was painting this picture of Edward Hopper in my head. Not sure why. Maybe the sound from afar to which the dog is turning his head, is that same music of Louie Armstrong?

It's not the parties,
the New Year's Eves
or even the day you married,
but in a day like any other day,
out of the blue,
(more than coincidence,
with someone you love)
you feel happy,
unadulteratedly.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living to The Metaphysical Possibility of Afterlife in the Mind of Someone Dying

On a casual day, not outrageously busy in the office, I popped into a blog and read this:

"In a hundred years I'll be dead. So will you. Before that time comes, I want to keep asking the question, "How do we make the world a more fun, meaningful, loving, creative place?"

– Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid.com, Post March 10, 2009

The first fourteen words have been lingering on my mind since.

Then the phone rang, I had a funeral to go.

Amid the noise, chanting and occasional deafening gong as the priest of Tao performing their rituals, the title of the iconic shark by Damien Hirst came to me: "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living".

Most of us, most of the time, see Death like this: a distant relative who will come visiting me one day. But definitely not today. Not remotely tomorrow. With average luck, neither the day after. In the mean time, I won't of course bother to call him asking "how are you?", least about how I should live my daily life. That's about it.

What will be my reaction when I finally see him face to face? Terribly frighten? Maybe. Proud and having no regret? I hope so.

The answer may well depend on what I fill in the blanks after that fourteen words.

No revolution planned. Nothing extraordinary happened. But this brief thought of death did make me feel inspired. A sting in my butt. A kick to seize my remaining days, before the inevitable meeting with our common relative who annoyingly sent me this junk mail attached with a shark.

Few weeks passed, now my line of thought is this: In a hundred years I'll be dead. So will you. After that?

Now Google Earth extends to its Garden of Delight, Hell and more.

These freaky images are snaps I took while visiting Eden and Hell beside (not "besides") the Garden of Earthly Delights. I'm referring to the painting by Bosch, which is a triptych depicting the central theme with Eden on the left panel and Hell on the right.

Thanks to Google Earth's mapping technology. The Prado Museum of Madrid became the first to open its collection online, allowing anyone to take a virtual view of their 14 masterpieces in ultra super mega high resolution. You can zoom in closer and closer, until it’s like putting your nose right up to the canvas (without security guards shouting at you). The aged paint and cracks become almost physical on your screen.

Other famous paintings include, Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's The 3rd of May 1808, Rembrandt's Artemis, Rubens’ Three Graces, Raphael's The Cardinal and more. I suspect other museums will soon follow. Wouldn't it be wonderful when one day all the art pieces in the world can be viewed at our fingertips? Then we could be freely greeted by the famous Smile or the terrible Scream.

You can click this link to see the reduced version by Google Map. But I highly recommend you to install Google Earth. Then you can truly appreciate the beauty of technology and the masterpieces it brings to you, right up to your nose.

Andrew Wyeth died

One of the best-known American realist painter, died on 16th last month, aged 91.

Almost all his paintings were about people and places around him in his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and his summer home in Cushing, Maine. The above is probably his best-known painting, Christina's World, depicting his neigbour who was crippled by polio crawling back to her house, now known as the Olson House.

He painted with tempera, an egg yolk based paint medium widely used before oils. I tried myself in school days (out of curiosity that egg goes well with pigments besides bacon). It proved too difficult for me to grasp. It's similar to acrylic, only dries extremely fast that leaves no room for you to mix on panel. So it's a painstaking process of layering and layering. Patience were short then. Weyth finished about two paintings in a year. You can see why.

One interesting fact worth mentioning. M. Night Shyamalan based his movie The Village on Wyeth's paintings. The village seen in the film was built in its entirety in one field outside Chadds Ford, not far from Wyeth's studio. Can you tell from below their connection?


He is the painter who was loved by the people more than critics. A typical situation reflects what often happens between the "art world" and the general public. An extract from The Wall Street Journal by columnist Terry Teachout may sum up the point:

Part of Wyeth's problem, of course, is that he was so very, very popular. In the ever-relevant words of Max Harrison, "People do not object to artists deserving success – only to their getting it." At a time when the vast majority of serious American art critics believed abstraction to be the One Best Way to paint, it was hugely irksome that America's most successful painter should have been firmly committed not just to representation, but to near-photographic realism. Why did the benighted masses insist on preferring "Christina's World" to the drips and spatters of Jackson Pollock? The answer was self-evident, at least to the art-world commentariat: Most people are stupid.

Though the debate between styles of art seems pointless these days of the postmodern, our appreciation of arts will always be influenced by the critics, media and the overall temperament of our time. The best we can do, I suggest, is to put on a noise-cancelling earphone, stand in front of a painting and listen only to our eyes.

Banksy's Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill

For more eerie creatures – aged and sad-faced Tweety, porn-watching monkey and hotdogs (yes, they are actually alive), visit its official site. The physical shop at 89, 7th Avenue in the West Village of New York City was closed. (All the pets were sold out I guess?)