Featured Painting - Itinerant

My recent Itinerant is a deliberately ambiguous piece, which depicts three almost identical figures spacing out in an empty boulevard. In the background, there are vague outlines of standing or seated figures, and a couple of vehicles, shaded beneath a huge awning or a theater marquee, or in the cast shadow of an imposing steel-glass structure, whose richly patterned façade was somewhat menacing. The strong contrast between the dark and obscure background and the brightly-lit and clearly defined street generates a strong dissonance. The almost identical postures and shapes of these three figures are enigmatic and hard to fathom. They are like roaming ghosts and can either be the same person appearing in three locations in sequence, or a group of persons march in unison. To ground the tableau, a partial figure bent over to reach the ground appears at the lower right of the canvas, adding an extra visual focus.


Itinerant
22” x 28”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

 

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 
 
Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- Featured Painting "Boyhood"
- Featured Painting, Hordes
- Featured Painting - Silent Party
- My Featured Painting - Diptych "19"
- Featured Painting – Emergence
- Featured Painting, Whirring
- Featured Painting - Quarry

Revisiting SFMOMA During Pandemic and David Park's Retrospective

SFMOMA reopened yesterday, and we went today to see the David Park retrospective and quite a few old friends. Like visiting an all-but-forgotten place and time, but now we're back in smoke-n-COVID-n-unraveling-democracy world. Still. Well worth the trip across the Bay...

 

The main offer was the David Park, A Retrospective, October 4, 2020–January 18, 2021. It was a glorious exhibition. In the normal years, I would have returned to see it again soon. Hopefully, we will be able to see it before it ends.

 

 

 

We also saw drawings from David Park and his circle. These life drawing studio might be the one still in use in UC Berkeley and I probably have spent some time drawing models there as well.

Richard Diebenkorn 

Franz Klein

Robert Motherwell

Cy Twombly

Anselm Kiefer Cy Twombly

Paul Cezanne

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Max Beckmann

 Thank you, SFMOMA!

Featured Painting "Boyhood"

Depicting human beings is both challenging and exciting, because of the complexity of the human emotions, and the viewers’ familiarity with expressions and postures associated with these emotions, which suffers no falsehood. 

My recent Boyhood attempted to capture the instance when a confident and cocky urchin, insistently pressed himself upon the viewers, announcing his presence. Though a little naughty, he still possessed his innocence, and his wonderment at the broader world surrounding him was palpably touching, and hopefully would viewers of their tender ages. 

The background was sparse, and open, allowing much space for the boy to occupy, except for a pair of moving legs towards the center space and seemingly poised to displace the boy. Perhaps, it was the man he was to become. The confluence of presence and future was both touching and a bit unnerving. 

 

Boyhood
28”x22”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020 

 

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- Featured Painting, Hordes
- Featured Painting - Silent Party
- My Featured Painting - Diptych "19"
- Featured Painting – Emergence
- Featured Painting, Whirring
- Featured Painting - Quarry
- Featured Painting – Desolate Souls of Main Street
- Featured Painting - Dream Forest

Featured Painting, Hordes

My Hordes is one of several paintings that examines herd behaviors of small objects. Resembling new sprouts on thin stalks, or small moths or butterflies, or microbes, here they sway about and dance rather coquettishly against an almost inviting orange-hued background. Though less menacing compared to those in Whirring, they still manage to stir some unease regarding things invisible, during our current protracted Coronavirus pandemic.


Hordes
20”x30”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- Featured Painting - Silent Party
- My Featured Painting - Diptych "19"
- Featured Painting – Emergence
- Featured Painting, Whirring
- Featured Painting - Quarry
- Featured Painting – Desolate Souls of Main Street
- Featured Painting - Weave
- Featured Painting - Dream Forest

Featured Painting - Silent Party

Starting this horizontal group portrait in a somewhat more upbeat time, employing a colorful palette, I aimed to create a group of people engaged in dialogues and interactions. However, during the painting process, those figures took more and more an air of despondency, and the vibrant colors started to become untruthful and had to fade. A couple of months later, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the piece was finally completed, it had morphed into a monochromatic nightmarish hallucination, featuring some sketchily painted heads, shrouded in white gauze, turning into different directions, strikingly silhouetted against pitch dark background, and emoting resignation, sadness, and anger. Though compressed in space, they seemed hardly related to one another, and remained in utter isolation; a party without conversation. To their left, a jumble of cantilevered structures protruded from the distance, adding an atmosphere of foreboding and disintegration. This painting ended with a sad wailing note, aptly echoing the signs reverberating in our daunting time.


Silent Party
18”x36”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020


Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

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- Featured Painting - Quarry
- Featured Painting – Desolate Souls of Main Street
- Featured Painting - Weave
- Featured Painting - Dream Forest
- Featured Painting - Interlocked

My Featured Painting - Diptych "19"

Missing making art in a community and the interaction with fellow artists, I decided to participate in a painting workshop, and one of the assignments was a small diptych, with one of them to have more and the other less paint. I did my best to capture the fear and resilience of people under threat from Coronavirus. This diptych is aptly titled “19”.

I hope that this small diptych, double portraits of a mask-wearing man and a woman, alert, vigilant, a tad fearful, yet resolute, titled 19, would give viewers a sense of fellowship, and fortify our resilience.


19
14”x11” & 14”x11”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020


Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- Featured Painting – Emergence
- Featured Painting, Whirring
- Featured Painting - Quarry
- Featured Painting – Desolate Souls of Main Street
- Featured Painting - Weave
- Featured Painting - Dream Forest
- Featured Painting - Interlocked

Featured Painting – Emergence

At first glance, Emergence is a calm sliver of routine life due to the simplicity of its composition and color scheme; upon closer inspection, what emerged from this picture was not so simple, rather it revealed something indecipherable and with a hint of sinisterness: against a sparse backdrop, a few curious looking, semi-translucent figures floated like ghosts from behind thin vertical bars, which made the whole landscape reminisce of a jail cell, despite the openness of those bars. What was emerging? Inner strength? Outside menace? Guilty conscience? Or stoical indifference to anyone’s fate?

 
Emergence
22” x 28”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2019


Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- Featured Painting, Whirring
- Featured Painting - Quarry
- Featured Painting – Desolate Souls of Main Street
- Featured Painting - Weave
- Featured Painting - Dream Forest
- Featured Painting - Interlocked
- Featured Painting - July Meteors