scattered underwear

It's been awhile here. Thank you for still checking in here...it really helps...

I've been moping around about this and that. Mainly: feeling neglected by sisters, being out of touch with cousins, and not being more there for my parents. Well, after a lot of back and forth in my head, it occurred to me that i really need to get a life. I don't have kids yet but i feel like i already know how it is not to be able to let your kids go and live their own lives. It sucks. Well luckily, i do still have my own friends and thank goodness for you guys. ♡

As for studio work, i'm still left with a lot of unfinished pieces that don't seem to be going anywhere. No red red days, you guys :(. I think i need to change my work routine or something. Too much emphasis on having the weekends free to make something that i end up wasting more time scattering about than getting anything done.

My little spoons of joy started not too long ago aren't too happy right now:



I still haven't been able to produce any good prints, even though the copper plates themselves look pretty nice to me:



Sadly realized that i don't really have it in me to be the kind of conceptual artists that i admire. How does one come up with awesome profound ideas? Yesterday, i didn't know where to go with the unfinished works laying around, so i started tearing up some paper. Before i knew it, i had a big bowl and a little bowl of it, and hours had passed.



Instead of getting depressed about how an entire free day passed without accomplishing anything 'substantial', i'm going to start being Okay about spending precious time like this. I like tearing paper. It's also prep work for making the spoons and whatever else later.

beginnings of an offering

undies

sewn on paper, not bigger than my palm, works in progress

holding them to the light:

light

oil & mixed media on masonite board, 34.3 x 132 cm (+ 5 cm relief surface), 2002

An old painting, very heavy. I feel like this now, buried sort of feeling, but not death, more like seeding, if that is the right word.

xx

rub-on letters & acrylic on collaged text pages, book dimensions 18.7 x 14.5 cm

View as slideshow @ Flicker: redredday

new mini pink series?

oil & mixed media on wooden panel, 6"x 6" each

May, look what came out from the comment you left me on that pink painting (the first one above is supposed to be a mini version for you but it did not turn out as good as i thought it would...so it may have to be reworked into something else...)



I thought i could make use of the June letters to use on these but they are not working well with any of them. Just as Uschi suggested here, the background for those letters does need to be on a longer and slimmer canvas...and i was so excited thinking these letters will be my fastest completed works yet.

Instead, more new problematic paintings to add to my pile of unfinished works!

pink skies

oil, string & mixed media on Masonite board, 16.6" x 20" [work in progress]

When i was little (around 10 or younger?), i remembered one time noticing how red the sky was turning as the sun was going down. I was outside walking with my dad at the time. All around us, there was this sudden pink glow everwhere. I loved it.

For some reason, i started skipping to this rhyme in Chinese without really knowing what i was saying. In translation, it goes something like this: Red red sky, the elderly is going to freeze and die.

As soon as i said that, my dad scolded at me and told me not to say that again. I was a little taken back because my dad, in all his gentle ways, hardly ever snaps at any one of us. I stopped to think why and immediately thought of my grandmother sick in bed all the time.

It was then that i understood how important my grandmother was to my dad even though he never expressed it. I started to see my dad in a new light, knowing that a lot of what is unspoken runs deep within him.

It is like what my mom says: If you want to see how much the man loves you, just look at his actions, not any lovey dovey words that he doesn't say.

Happy Father's Day, BA!

black series: something else

acrylic & pen on collaged paper mounted on wood panel, 6.75" x 7.6" x 1.75"

The original sketch has a layer of white acrylic on top of the tan paper. In the process of glueing it down to the wood panel, i rubbed too hard and got the layer of paper with the acrylic paint torn up. Fortunately, the area where most of the pen drawing is concentrated (in black) is still in tact.

I thought to recreate the original and paint a flesh layer of white where it was before but now the more i look at it, the more it seems to want to be something else...


It's been hanging next to one of the black series paintings and i like it very much together. So maybe this is where the [black] series need to be heading...incorporating some smaller pieces and drawings maybe.

pear 1.1 vintage blue

oil and string on masonite board, 19.75" x 19.2" x 1.75" [work in progress]
(1.75" is board [frame] thickness from wall)

Recently worked on an old painting that I have cut up and painted over. This is my favorite blue at the moment. I am loving the string "drawing" of the three loops hanging on the vertical line:



Really excited about it but it's also making me a bit tentative to continue for fear of "ruining" it...

skin/flesh (detail)

A glob of caulk applied on the surface of the wood
and then painted over.

Below is the back of the same spot:



-detail above-









-detail below-




The two images above are painted on one single wood board (the front and the back of it), 36" x 11.25"


String coated with some caulk and then painted over.

Below is the back detail of the above spot: