The Reminiscence of a Sunbather

I went to swim during my lunch hour.
I didn't feel like pushing myself too far and opted to lie down after few laps.
The sun is not particularly strong.
As I closed my eyes and was soaking up the heat,
I realized I hadn't sunbathed for a long long time.

Blood red, orange, yellowish brown, blood red again.
I loved how we could still "see" the sunlight getting stronger or less through our eyelids
as blankets of cloud, thin and thick, in and out, was sheltering.
My mind went completely off for like eternity before a sense of happiness woke me.
It's in the shape of light.
The light that was dancing in the pool water.
You don't need to go to black hole to see how light was bent.
Swirls of light twisting and turning, onto the side of the pool, and off swimmers' flesh.

Then I thought of my past, good times, happy times.
I thought of what my first experience of beauty was...
Is it a picture of Mount Huang I saw on a calendar,
the singing of Karen Carpenter,
or rather my first experience of ugliness
when I was forced by my mom to "inherit" my sister's pants?
It's a hideous orangey brown.

I thought of my wife's face,
how one late afternoon light caught her face
and the outline was golden.

I thought of sunset
(our shared symbol of sublime beauty).
One time me and a friend were completely captivated by a beautiful sunset on our trip to Cornwall.
We felt it's an imperative to savour that very moment.
We pulled over on the side lane of a hectic motorway,
(it's meant for broken car, maybe lovers' fight, but definitely not taking picture!)
It's a risky romantic thing to do,
as cars and lorries were shooting past us (possibly with swearing).

I thought of this thought itself.
I thought when one was thinking, the world seemed to revolve around us.
I recalled at the age of 18 I think, one day I was on the backseat of a bus after school,
I looked, in the frame of my eyes, was a picture as banal as any other day –
some twenty to thirty people's back wobbling in front of me.
But time froze at that moment. A sense of awe, or the sublime beckoned.
A question was asked. But I wasn't aware of what exactly.
Later I figured it was something like this:
"Why everything exists, rather than nothing?"
"Why I am not that guy or that girl or he or she but a 'me' opposing all these otherness?"
From that day on, a part of me was awaken (or newly born).
Thought wakes up thought wakes up thought...
I realized, all these thoughts were reminiscent of some of the best time in my life.

I opened my eyes and sat up.
I wanted to know what the time was.
A piece of paper writing"out of order" on the public clock.
I knew anyway it was time to go.
Cool!
I thought,
Happiness cost exactly HK$19.
(The pool's entrance fee.)

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.

The Clearest Moment

The romantic salmon

My sister's fiancé Phil, is an American who fishes wild salmon in Alaska. Once we had a conversation around these delectable creatures. He told me the apparent absurdity of their life.

They hatch in the rivers and streams of Alaska. Their body will grow and adapt sea water before embarking on the journey of their life time – swimming across the Pacific Ocean all the way to Australia and heading back ultimately to their birth place. This is the brutal struggle you often see on the Discovery Channel – how they re-adapt back to fresh water, swim and toil up the stream, with miles and miles of rapids and even waterfalls to leap. Not all make it. Most arrive hurt and shattered. In the end, they breed, lay eggs and die. Then the next generation relive the same cycle again under the blessings of their fathers and mothers – their nutrient-rich remains, to be exact.

"What a poor sad little fellow." my sister quipped.

"No, I think it's rather romantic!" I said.

They were baffled. I can understand why. To most people, the word "romantic" means nothing more than the sentiment and feeling associated with love (a candlelit dinner or two lovers walking on a beach being the top romantic cliche). It's the first definition you find in most dictionaries. But look closer, it's actually a tricky word. Here is a list of the definitions given by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: consisting of or resembling a romance

2: having no basis in fact : imaginary

3: impractical in conception or plan : visionary

4 a: marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized
b: often capitalized : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of romanticism
c: of or relating to music of the 19th century characterized by an emphasis on subjective emotional qualities and freedom of form ; also : of or relating to a composer of this music

5 a: having an inclination for romance : responsive to the appeal of what is idealized, heroic, or adventurous
b: marked by expressions of love or affection
c: conducive to or suitable for lovemaking

6: of, relating to, or constituting the part of the hero especially in a light comedy

Language can be a tedious matter. Too much analysis can kill off any...romance. Exactly! So I'm not going to make a linguistic fuss about it. (I'm not competent to, anyway.) All I want to do is to sing out my deep down yearning to be a romantic, roughly in the sense of definition 4th above.

Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18th century largely as a revolt against the rise of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Briefly put, Enlightenment makes rational thinking absolute, while emotion and other sources of gaining knowledge obsolete. Industrial Revolution projected a whole new model for social advancement which many at that time feared the prospect of machine's dominance over human and ultimately our "humanity". I can sympathize with that.

While I don't take in all the Romantic doctrines, especially the glorification of a misunderstood heroic artist, I do cling to the importance of individual autonomy against the zeitgeist of the time, and the emotional aspects of us as human. We are each an unique individual who thinks, loves, cries, has dreams to chase, and is moved by beautiful things (oh no, I don't mean a LV bag!); not just 1 rational task-accomplishing executive in a corporation, 1 single-minded status-anxious wealth-seeking member of a social class, or 1 out of millions of targeted customers in a "market segment". But I'm afraid that's the sort of person (or specimen) our present world is shaping us to be.

Out of the window and onto the shimmering stream, a parrot was seeing for the first time a salmon leaping out of the water. She realized there's an alternative other than a caged life – a monotonous, calculative, cynical life in a materialistic, consumeristic, pragmatic and utilitarian cage. Breaking free became her pressing desire that no rational exercise could deny. Even that also meant the beginning of worries and risk of losing stable supply of food and all that. But what not.

"If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." – Erica Jong

When we think the salmon's life sad, of course we are asserting our values and judgement on them. We think if I was in their shoes – work and toil the whole life but to go back to square one and sacrifice for nothing but a cycle of the same recycle, what's the gain? I cannot answer for the salmon. But that's the thing. We were brought up to be ultra-utilitarian. The question is: Is everything a matter of utility? Even so, a step back, isn't the same cycle happening to us? Only ours is in the shape of a rectangle – waking up in a [bed], going into a glass-adorned [office-block], being stuck in a [cubicle] for hours, working on a [computer], back home exhausted and staring at a box called [TV] before burying ourselves in the [bed] again, day in day out, until our final burial, in a [coffin].

So at the end of the day, death makes us all equal for that matter (the sum of the balance sheet). We are pondering the life of our reflection in a mirror. Do I want to be a romantic salmon believing in a higher calling or a pragmatic parrot selling her soul?

Am I wandering too far? Sorry, that's the problem with romantics.

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 Cat with Three Legs

Mimi belongs to the vet my cat seeing. She's a perfectly healthy cat, except her left hind leg were amputated.

Energetic and often vocal, she's more like a housekeeper in the vet, patrolling up and down, and meowing in a low tone to express her discontent of over-crowded dogs (or simply just to get attention).

Every time I see her, I feel lifted. I say to myself: if she can survive with three legs, I can survive with two, no matter what.

Remark: I got a lot of traffics coming from search words "cat with three legs". Some as specific as "Can a cat with three legs survive?" So, here's a bit more info about Mimi that may help:
Mimi was nine when she's badly injured and was brought to the vet. But her loveless owner didn't want to keep her because of the prolong medical expenses . So the vet decided to keep her their own. Eventually she got well and has no problem whatsoever in daily life. Now she is nineteen years old.

Look up there!

Gloom, Groan and Moan, I have better place to go.