Peach Blossom Spring
Spring 2022
These ten paintings borrow their name from the literary text Peach Blossom Spring, written by Tao Qian. It’s a tale of a Fisherman who has a chance encounter upon a forest of peach trees in full bloom, lining the shores of a river. The Fisherman discovers a hidden paradise, where the citizens live and work in harmony with nature, unaware of the outside world.
This fable was written in 421CE, during the Jin Dynasty in China, known for is political corruption and civil conflicts. Qian imagined his utopian world, through the reflections of his own circumstances and the society upheavals at the time.
The word utopia, is taken from a Greek root word, meaning “no where”. By definition, the fantasy is only possible because it cannot exist in the real world. The uniquely perfect qualities that the dreamer desires are purely imaginary.
I wanted these abstract paintings to infiltrate you into their own imagined worlds. Visual devices, such as colour and layering techniques, become clues to enter the scenes. Each painting began with a series of geometric shapes, not unlike those of children’s building blocks. These became the foundation for a visual narrative to unfold. From there, the raw canvases are filled, with emphasis on layering and density. Thick, rough patches of colour, over paint washes, and signature markings were used to create a visual language, as though to tell a story. The muddy colour combinations reference previous paintings that I have created over the past five years, as a way to reflect and recycle my own experiences.
My work is centered around the philosophy of aesthetics; the study of perspective. As viewers, we often try to make sense of abstraction. I am interested in the time-based experience that happens in front of the painting, as the viewers’ eyes travel through the layers and lines, immersed in the unknown. As the viewer participates, they try to find themselves in what they are looking at. In doing so, the worlds contained on the canvas surface, are built, evolve, and collapse into themselves.