Doll-like - A Senior Thesis April 2008

So my show has come and gone. It was a great evening, especially the opening. Too much running around and meeting everyone and their awesome family that I even forgot to take any pictures for the night. Anyway, took some photos of my show before taking it down. The gray wall was chosen by Cassie and I. It just look very nice and warm.

Anna and I

Ji Young and I pulling at Patti's strings

Giving myself the disapproving finger.

Katie doing the ho-down next to her own portrait.

Save me from the evil clutches.

With Megalicious.

Reenact.

And here are the ink paintings in a better light. They are subtle and gray.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Pull Strongly

Megalicious

Ghetto Forrest

Pulling Veltri

Fly Me to the Moon

Golden Arches

Malaysian Reject

Posing Pulley

Left to right: Gerry Nichols, Malaysian Reject, David Kettner and JiYoung Byon

Under pressure

Okay, not that I have disappeared or anything, it's just that for the past few months, I have been really busy, under pressure and partying like crazy cause, well, I am cracking under the pressure of graduation and teachers who kept ripping me apart. Okay, this is my blog, I guess I don't have to censor myself, so I can be uninhibited, so let me rephrase, The teachers are ripping me a new asshole.

I have been questioned so much, I have lost my focus, lost my direction, and am wondering if I understand what I am doing at all, so I have stopped doing any work, Yup, stopped in my track, lost my momentum, can't even manage a flutter, let alone fly. I am reaching rock bottom, downward spiral, the end of the world for me, goodbye, sayonara, zai jien, sorry, bu zai jien...phew...what a mouthful, gotta catch my breath here...


Well anyway, picked myself off the sorry ground again, 3 more weeks till my show, gotta do it right and get things working.

All I have been doing for my thesis show end of this month, I am not posting them up here yet. Instead, I am posting this doodle that I did today, cause I bought inks, lots of inks!! of something utterly irrelevant to my thesis. Back to what I love best, painting fantasy :)

Enjoy...

More doll paintings

My last two paintings for this semester.

Through the looking glass
38 X 70 inches
Oil on canvas

Legs
68 X 34 inches
Oil on canvas

Latest Art And stuffs~

Did a light installation with light and fabric that I dyed and felted.

The heart-Veiled

A Hugeeeee drawing in the hallway for open house ^^

Festival of Light. The front of my school.

This funny lady at the Festival of Light drawing a caricature of Patti and I.

Cirdan went blond and Fuyuko got some red eyes. XD

Bare

This is the most humorous painting I have ever done. HUGE painting, 62" X 42" so it is in your face meat..... It is so outwardly in your face sexual for one. It is a male I am painting...that's 2. And it is a doll. XD

Everyone's first reaction seeing this painting was to...Laugh. LOL I can't help laughing either. Such a loaded image, serious and sexual and yet. Humorous?

Ribbon

This is a 48" X 48" oil on canvas painting.

Dolls

We are given the free will to choose from the day we are born, or rather, led to believe so because our freedom is rather limited and rarely free. We do whatever we choose to do but in fact, that choice has been made after careful evaluation and scrutiny due to consequences that might come. There is an invisible hand that nudges us towards the direction of the social norm. So, our “free” choices are governed by rules and regulations, and influenced by responsibilities and obligations. We are not unlike a doll, moved and posed by the society.

My art now is very much influenced by classical paintings (pure art) and also Japanese anime and manga which I grew up on. Fine art (pure art) has become so expensive and made exclusively for the rich due to tax, as there is very little incentive to support them. Due to this, a large amount of money and a larger amount of creative minds and artists venture into commercial art, and thus, all new ideas and styles are churned out in that realm. Commercial art's expression, styles and concepts are far fiercer and expressed better. I guess that is why my passion for art, though deeply rooted in the classical style, is still very much influenced by Japanese manga, anime and the Otaku culture.

Asian Ball Jointed Dolls, one of the new Otaku culture is a form of art which I am very much interested in. The collectors see the dolls as a manifestation of themselves. They can dress the dolls in ways they will never dress and become someone they can never be in real life.
I also see the dolls as a form of domination, To move the dolls in ways they cannot object to. Some sort of perversion maybe.

Hang. Woodblock print. The ultimate symbol of possession. Also, this piece is about the stereotyping of women, a symbol of fertility.
Lift. Ink on paper. Perversion. Dominance. Sexuality.

In parts and pieces.


The line-up. This brought about many Racial and Feminist issues.


We are meat. Reference : Edward Hick's painting

Past works

For the past two semesters, I have been running about not knowing what I should be painting. I paint from fantasy to landscapes then ultimately, decided that I should be painting dolls. Will update on the reason why I paint dolls later. But first, let's take a look at what I have been painting when I was running about like a headless chicken.


Winter Solace is a piece of painting that comes in four separate canvases. I wanted to paint a winter landscape scene with bamboos. Sorta like an attempt to paint an eastern painting with western technique.


Winter Blossoms. One of my favorite painting. Was experimenting with brush marks.


Weeping Cherry. A painting I painted with my left hand. I was trying to loosen up my painting style.


This is where I died. A painting .... not going to elaborate on it.


Pulang Kampung. My emotional turmoil that was caught between staying or flying home.


Imitation Of Life. A painting of my doll in the classical portraiture style.



And the semesters before this

King Of Pain, a self portrait.


Eve.

Tarian Suria.


You Never Came. this was what started my obsession with Winter landscapes.