An Oil Painting "Refuse"

 

My oil painting “Refuse” was inspired by the pile of clothes discarded to be recycled or reused. They are not waste; rather, they are materials for future purposes. Berkeley is a land of the free, and people can reinvent and grow into a better version of themselves through ingenuity and diligent labor. This pile of “junk”, the rejected, actually is dignified and rather beautiful in both colors and shape. Nothing is without merit and value; the collective shape resembles that of the spread tail feathers of a peacock, vibrant and alluring. There is hope that resides in this pile of “junk” and it points to a rejuvenated future.

Refuse
28” x 22”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2021

© Matthew Felix Sun
www.matthewfelixsun.com

Successful East Bay Open Studios at Makers Workspace Studio

On December 2 and 3, fourteen artists and artisans presented paintings, drawings, ceramics, mosaics, and jewelry at Makers Workspace Studio during the East Bay Open Studios (EBOS). It was a successful communal space. I am particularly pleased that my friend Edith Ng presented her beautiful ceramics to the public for the first time, as our guest artist. Her debut brought tremendous energy and many guests to our studio and all of us benefit from her presence.

During the EBOS event, I was able to sell more than a dozen gouache and ink paintings. Here a some of these works:

Roots, gouache on paper, 14×11, 2023

Hydrangea, gouache on paper, 14×11, 2023 

 
The View, India Ink on Yupo paper, 14×11, 2023

Flickering, gouache on paper, 14×11, 2023

Profusion, gouache on Yupo paper, 14×11, 2023

Ethereal, gouache on Yupo paper, 14×11, 2023

Autumn Song, gouache on paper, 11×14, 2023

Red, gouache on paper, 11×14, 2023

Breaching, gouache on paper, 11×14, 2022

I am so grateful for all the support I received. Thank you!

Ethereal "Immaculate"

Eethereal "Immaculate" “Immaculate” aptly summarizes its subject of the painting – several ethereal white lilies floating in an opaque water body, whose pattern resembles the other-worldly images transmitted by the great Hubble Space Telescope. These dreamily floating flowers and their irregularly patterned background, mesmerize and pull the viewers into the depth. This painting was published by  

Your Impossible Voice as the cover art in their 24th Issue in Spring 2021. 

 

Immaculate
gouache on paper
9"x12"
2020

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- Quietly "Waiting"
- Fuzzy "Memories of Childhood"
- Fantastic "Edge"
- Arid Urban Life – "Crossing"
- Domain ⁠— Familiarity, Sameness, and Subtle Variations
- A Glimpse of Relief ⁠—"Narrow Confinement"
- Uncertain "Prospect" - an oil painting
- Touching Landscape Painting - "Still Water"

Domain ⁠— Familiarity, Sameness, and Subtle Variations

Domain was another painting completed during the height of the COVID pandemic, when my daily sphere shrank to my humble dwelling. Besieged by the sameness of familiar settings, I found some distractions from my bright kitchen, from the geometric patterns composed by a few household objects, to the contrast between the hard edges of those objects and the morphic shapes of their shadows, cast by the ever-changing, captivating lights. I recorded this solace with this painting, a study of familiarity, sameness, and subtle variations.

Domain
Oil on Canvas
28” x 22”
Completed in 2021

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:  
- A Glimpse of Relief ⁠—”Narrow Confinement”
- Uncertain "Prospect" - an oil painting
- Touching Landscape Painting - "Still Water"
- Enigmatic “Seclusion”
- Oil Painting “College Town”
- Allegorical "Surveying"
- Crisp and Somber "Drifting"
- Disquieting Code - Oil Painting "Postscript

A Glimpse of Relief ⁠—”Narrow Confinement”

In the last couple of years, like many people, I was largely home-bound, and some reliable distractions and relief came through the courtesy of some windows facing the outside world, where some birds and squirrels rambled undisturbed by the upheavals in the human sphere. 

When those carefree creatures failed to meet their appointments, I would ramble to a hallway window with a view to the house next door, whose bold and rich coat of deep blue, orange, and marron would jolt me into sharp alert. It was endlessly fascinating to notice how the colors shifted with the weather and to observe how those rich hues seeped into the hallway and tinted the plain off-white walls and ceiling colorful and alluring. Gradually, these shades moved and shimmered, like quivering butterfly wings, tantalizing and comforting yet somewhat overwhelming and alarming. This sight formed the foundation of my metaphorical painting, Narrow Confinement, which recorded the narrow sliver of the comfort allowed me during the trying time and was much appreciated.

Narrow Confinement
28” x 22”, Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2021

 

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:  
- Uncertain "Prospect" - an oil painting
- Touching Landscape Painting - "Still Water"
- Enigmatic “Seclusion”
- Oil Painting “College Town”
- Allegorical "Surveying"
- Crisp and Somber "Drifting"
- Disquieting Code - Oil Painting "Postscript"
- Featured Oil Painting - Crisp

Featured Painting -- Congregation

A giant verdant tree, erect on its strong and knobbly roots, full of colorful chairs hanging from its riotously wide-spreading branches, is quite a heartwarming congregation. Warm and deep colors intertwined with shades cool and pale, helps to create modulating and shifting moods.

Despite joyous colors of those chairs, their positions are somewhat precarious, manifested in a lone chair underneath the seemingly carefree gathering, clinging to the roots of the tree — knocked down, a fallen one, or a cast out one? It would be up to viewers to interpret.

 Apropos viewer’s perception, I was also somewhat surprised to hear from a friend on how disturbing the painting was. Those swinging chairs, somewhat called more disturbing images to his mind — hanging bodies swinging in high branches, echoing those from war times documented by Goya, or from not so distant periods of concentrated lynching, whose records were fading fast from our collective memory. This linkage to the darkness was so serendipitous, that even I needed such illumination. Apparently, my intention, combining with viewers’ interpretation, could have generated much more interesting dialogue, thus create another form of congregation.

 

This painting currently is being exhibited at Berkeley Central Arts Passage, as part of the Unity show (June 16th - October 13th, 2018)


Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- Featured Drawing "Formation"
- Featured Painting "Birches"
- My Featured Painting - "Paris and Three Goddesses"
- My Featured Painting - Colony
- My Featured Painting - New Century's Shangri-La
- My Featured Painting - Procession
- Featured Painting - Waft
- Featured Painting - Remembrance

Featured Painting "Birches"

A vision serendipitously visited me, and my subsequent partially-successful effort to capture it, resulted in a sparse and drawing like oil painting, Birches. The vision I pursued was a field of blurry birch woods, with the outlines of those slender white trunks emerging and disappearing constantly into darker background, as if the constant ripples of a vast waterbody. My final painting looked almost like the negative of that vision - bright serene background, on which floated silhouettes of several birch trunks, branches, and leaves, isolated or in clusters, in panoramic view, or zoomed-in detail.

 
Birches
22" x 28"
Oil on Canvas 
Completed in 2018

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com


Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- My Featured Painting - "Paris and Three Goddesses"
- My Featured Painting - Colony
- My Featured Painting - New Century's Shangri-La
- My Featured Painting - Procession
- Featured Painting - Waft
- Featured Painting - Remembrance
- Featured Painting “Mirage” – A World of Ambiguity

My Featured Painting "Arabesque"

The medium or media we choose to convey our deepest feelings and expressions, etc., however competent, can never fully convey the whole complicated concepts our brain formed mysteriously, thus the endless striving to meet the challenge, to do a better job still in the next given opportunity, thus the hunger to develop and grow as an artist, be it visual, musical compositional or a writing kind.

It also occurs often enough that one form of artistic creation, spurs on the re-interpretation with another media of either the whole story or a fleeting moment, not necessarily to prove a better job can be done; rather, to add another dimension to the engaging concept while hoping to complement the original.

I have been stimulated, on multiple occasions, by novels I read, sometimes the whole atmosphere of the book, such as Blindness by José Saramago, or sometimes, just a specific passage which may not even be pivotal in the whole scheme, such as my newly completed oil painting, Arabesque, inspired by a passage from The Known World by Edward P. Jones: "... looked over at the open chiffarobe [sic], whose door was broken and so would never close properly, looked at the black dress hanging there. It seemed to have its own life, so much life that it could have come down and walked over and placed itself over her body. Fastened itself."


Arabesque / 阿拉伯風 / Arabeske
Oil on Canvas
28" x 22"
Completed in 2013

I actually was quite stirred by the passage and the image just flooded into my mind. Incidentally, this painting also fell into a painting scheme of mine - I have been working on a series of "White Dresses", which I saw as both liberated and restricted, at once individual and impersonal, simultaneously beautiful and sinister. Now it started the companion series "Black Dress".






Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- My Featured Painting "Cascades"
- My Featured Painting "Origin"
- Featured Painting - Remembrance
- My Featured Painting "Apprehend"
- Featured Painting “Mirage” – A World of Ambiguity
- Featured Painting – “Forest Within” – When Reality Met Illusion
- Featured Painting: The March of Time
- My Featured Painting "Minotaur" 

Featured Installation - Wilting Flowers

Recently I created an installation Wilting Flowers and fully documented the creation and installation processes.


This new effort was spurred by my continued fascination with paper material – delicate, malleable, and transitory, characteristics well suited for hinting at, versus representing, a world full of fragility and vulnerability, constantly under the threat of total destruction.

My local newspaper, “The San Francisco Chronicle”, served as the foundation: a segment of our time, distilled and encapsulated. Inky strokes and splashes were added to the newspaper sheets, which were folded and tied up to form large flowers, with aluminum wires wrapped with dyed twine as stems.
For the background, I chose five sheets of plain white paper, streaked with similar black strokes of ink diluted with various amount of water.

To install, I attached these background paper to a wall in an uneven row, then affixed those flowers, 13 total, to those sheets. There were no strict rules about how to lay out the background sheets and flowers, as long as the finished installation looked balanced, and the flowers largely faced outwards.

I have installed these sheets and flowers on different surfaces – a colorful graffitied plywood wall, or somber looking wooden fences, at different times of the day. The differences between the surfaces, the different light cast on the wall or fence, background sheets and paper flowers, all contributed to a murmuring polyphony.

 
Wilting Flowers
Ink on paper and newspaper, aluminum wire, cotton string
40" x 140" x 5"
Completed in 2016









Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- Featured Painting – “Forest Within” – When Reality Met Illusion
- Featured Painting: The March of Time
- My Featured Painting "Minotaur"
- Featured Painting "Progression"
- A New Installation - Chairs Installation, November 2012
- Stringed White Dresses - The Process of a New Installation
- "Intrude", Wonderful Rabbits Installation in San Francisco

Featured Oil Painting "White Dress"

My still life oil painting, "White Dress", was inspired by a vision of a tiny white dress floating in a vast open sky. While working on the painting, I managed to make the delicate-looking dress full of free-spirit and bravura, as it floated against an intense red backdrop, whose hues shifted and varied mercurially, like raging flames. Small, and delicate, yet the small white dress flew on, nonchalantly, unconcerned with its own vulnerability, however threatened by the menacing environ.



The success of this painting gave me an impetus to continue the probe of the psyche of a personified white dress, and embarked on a journey of making a series of white dresses, objects I judged perfect to reflect or stand in as the bodies they are to clothe, as documented in this article: "White Dress" Series Continues - A New Drawing and a New Painting. This painting was also part of my Apocalypse Series. It was selected for juried exhibitions at 4th National Juried Exhibition, Prince Street Gallery, Chelsea, Manhattan, New York, 12 - 30 July 2011, and ViewPoint 2007, 39th Annual National Juried Art Competition, Cincinnati Art Club, Ohio, November 2007.

Originally published on my website: “White Dress" - Beginning of an Ongoing Series

Other Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst:
- Featured Oil Painting “Father and Son”
- "Arabesque" and Other Paintings Inspired by Literature
- My Featured Work - Portrait Painting "Grandma"
- My Featured Work: Oil Painting “Interaction” – A Group Portraits
- Featured Oil Painting "The Triumph of Saint George"

A Still Life Painting, Two Pears, Completed

Earlier this year, I started to work on some fruit drawings, mostly with figs and pears as my subject.  Later, I decided to commit such effort onto canvas with oil paint to depict my edible subjects.  Finally I completed a painting with two pears, revealed from a diamond-shaped slashed opening.  The bright color on the fruits contrasted strongly with the muted background.



Below are several drawings I made earlier this year.






Related posts on Art · 文化 · Kunst: 
- New Painting "Lantern" Completed
- Painting "Surveying" Completed
- Niobe - An Installation
- New Painting "Last Trip - A Dream" Completed
- One More Painting Featuring White Dress

Featured in "News and Buzz" on ArtSlant

ArtSlant, a prominent Contemporary Art Network with worldwide arts calendars, artists, reviews and online art sales of originals and prints.

I have been associated with this wonderful website for a while and have been recognized several times with Showcase Awards, for my paintings and a drawing. 



Recently, ArtSlant contacted me to include me in their Watchlist and presto, my feature was posted on ArtSlant's News & Buzz section:





The three paintings they posted are a still life, an abstract and a portrat:







It's wonderful to be recognized and I surely hope that this enable me to reach out to broader audience.  Thank you, ArtSlant!

Daily Objects Became Art - "Laundered Clothes" Painting Completed

Several days ago, I was suddenly amused by the drying laundries in my bathroom. There was some studied casual charm in the sight, which was incidentally a bit melancholic and touching.  It also emitted certain warmth, being connected to things close to me on personal levels.

A quick sketch evolved to a painting - simultaneously playful, calm and a bit yearning.  Oil painting "Laundered Clothes" Completed.

Laundered Clothes
Oil on Canvas
24" x 18"
Completed in 2011

© Matthew Felix Sun
www.matthewfelixsun.com

Related article: Beauty in Household Objects

One More Painting Featuring White Dress

Last weekend was a fulfilling weekend.  I was able to wrap up two paintings I'd been working on for months.  I discussed the first one - White Dresses a couple days earlier and today, and now I am going to discuss my White Dress with Birds briefly. 

For this painting, the white dress was not in the original plan.  I was in the process of working on paintings with portals and this painting, at its half-finished stage, felt very empty and devoid of meaning and life.  While juggling between works, I was suddenly hit with the idea of incorporating a white dress into this one.  The dress should be airy yet dominant, unlike that in the White Dress I completed in 2005, or the White Dresses with featured a multitude of floating dresses.  I also used bold graphite outline to set the boundaries of windows and the grids on the dress, to emphasis the contrast and texture. 

The white dress was hanging freely yet being confined in the narrow interior; the curtains were billowing but flew inwards; the birds on the dress were confined in their little cell, however pretty.  The painting thus achieved a sense of a deliberate incoherence and clashes, in a subtle and nonviolent way, and enigmatic too.


White Dress with Birds
Oil on Canvas
20" x 24"
Completed in 2011

You can see other paintings I'd done with the motif of white dress below:


White Dresses
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"
Completed in 2011


White Dress
Oil on Canvas
20" x 16"
Completed in 2005

White Dresses - First Painting Finished in 2011

I just completed the first painting in 2011 - White Dresses.  It continued on the white dress motif I started in 2005.  The dress is still floating in the air, but gets multiplied by large numbers and the flaming red is replaced by much duller green:


White Dresses
Oil on Canvas
22" x 28"
Completed in 2011

For comparison, below images is the one I completed in 2005 - White Dress:



White Dress
Oil on Canvas
20" x 16"
Completed in 2005

Video Presentation of Still Life Paintings

Continuing my effort to present my paintings and drawings in a "curated" way, I made another video of my still life paintings.

As a painter, still life as a genre does not hold my attention as portrait or landscape paintings, simply because I feel that I can express my thoughts and emotions better through other subject matters. But I do esteem this genre as much and time to time I did feel compelling reasons to try my hands in this field.

I did not aim to recreate life like a photographer, rather, my paintings have always try to interpret what I saw. My still life drawings are much more "faithful" because they are mostly studies of real life and less personal statements.



Happy Thanksgiving!

>> Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XIV: My Theatrical Paintings on Video
<< Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XII: Orientation of Paintings

List of Video Presentation of My Artworks

My Uncle's Chinese Style Paintings

On the occasional of one of my aunts - my Dad's sister - eightieth birthday, my uncle - my Mom's brother - painted a pair of still life Chinese paintings for my aunt. They adorns the table of my aunt, who proudly showed me these lovely pieces:

Travel Inspired Paintings

I'm about to travel for a while. While making preparations, I remembered many trips I took before, particularly with the purpose of sightseeing, and the works I produced afterwards:





















Rape Fields (Yangtze Delta, China, 1991)























Street Scene, Roma (Rome, Italy - Italy, France 2000)























Venice (Venice, Italy - Italy, France 2000)























Via Italia (Italy - Italy, France 2000)























Woods (Italy - Italy, France 2000)



















La Seine, I (Paris, France - Italy, France 2000)






















La Seine, II (Paris, France - Italy, France 2000)






















A Young Frenchman (Paris, France - Italy, France 2000)






















Winter Flowers (Shenyang, China - 2003)



















Bruges, Impression (Bruges, Belgium - UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, 2004)


















Sediment (Beijing, China - 2005)













Beyond (Chengdu, China - Chengdu, Three Gorges, Xi'an and Xianyang 2007)






















Orange Parisian (Paris, France - 2008)