Featured Painting - One Fine Day

My 2007 oil painting One Fine Day soon will conclude its five-month long exhibition at at McGuire Real Estate Gallery in Elmwood District, Berkeley. This painting, in somewhat sickly moon light tone (pale Prussian blue), depicted a school of agitated and thrashing fish, tightly packed in confining space, bulging eyes telegraphing anguish, straining to escape of a deadly trap they had unfortunately fallen into.

The ironic title I chose, perhaps ought to be ascribed to some lucky fishermen. And that spoke the volume of the relationship of mankind and the unfortunate nature.

One Fine Day
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"
Completed in 2007 

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

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Oil Painting "Upstream" Goes to Seattle

Last week, I shipped to Seattle my 2008 oil painting, Upstream, which has been selected for the juried show, 2014 Evergreen Association of Fine Arts (EAFA) Open Exhibition, at EAFA Gallery in the Seattle Design Center (5701 Sixth Avenue South, Suite P292, Seattle, WA 98108).

This modest painting, measured 24" by 18", semi-abstract in style, clearly influenced by Chinese ink painting, depicts a fish or two struggles to swim upstream, against the current.  It is fitting for the painting to travel to Seattle, because it was in that city when I witnessed an amazing salmon run in Chittenden Locks Fish Ladder several years ago.

 

This painting was not a frank documentation of that fish ladder scene; rather, when I painted it, I was trying to capture a free spirit, a spirit to overcome adversaries.  I deliberated chose a black and white color scheme, and a bold, almost abstract outline, as I was mostly interested in something elemental, less representational.

This work surely has a charmed life and earned a fair bit of recognitions - in 2009, it was published in The William and Mary Review by The College of William and Mary, Virginia, Volume 47.

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My Fish Paintings on YouTube

I am really on a roll now, building up my YouTube video presentations of my artworks.  This post features my fish paintings.

Time to time, I have painted fish, which is quite fascinating to me.  They are free yet water bound and that duality holds infinite opportunity for artists interested in probing psychological depth.  The relations between human beings and fish is quite complicated and several of my paintings such as "At Home" or "One Fine Day" described this rather clearly.

Yet, not all of them strike sad tones.  There are upbeats as well, embodied in paintings like "Upstream".  There is certain indomitable spirit in fish as well, which is what most cherishable.



Golden Fish
Oil on Canvas, 36" x 24", Completed in 2005
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3835140493/

One Fine Day
Oil on Canvas, 18" x 24", Completed in 2006
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3835017688/

White Fish
Oil on Canvas, 24" x 30", Completed in 2005
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3842416319/

Linear Fish
Oil on Canvas, 28" x 22", Completed in 2005
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3842416355/

Mackerel
Oil on Canvas, 28" x 22", Completed in 2007
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3842416439/

At Home
Oil on Canvas, 18" x 24", Completed in 2007
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3843244174/

Jingwei Filling Up the Sea
Oil on Canvas, 24" x 36", Completed in 2008
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3856364733/

Upstream
Oil on Canvas, 24" x 18", Completed in 2008
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewfelixsun/3834225071/

For more fish or animal related paintings, please visit my Flickr photo set: Animal.

>> Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part VII: My Bird Paintings on YouTube
<< Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part V: Flower Paintings in Video

List of Video Presentation of My Artworks

A Trip to Woodside, California

Last Saturday, I went to a picnic at Woodside, California. It was a cloudy day for picnic but luckily the rain didn't come and the ride was quite pleasant. After so much rain in Bay area, the hills were rather lush:













At the town square, I saw an enormous fish sculpture as below: