Artist Statement

Abstract

Water is undeniable an essential element of life. There is a Chinese phrase which says that “water carries the boat and floods the boat.” Water’s intervention in our life is widespread.

Before mirror was invented, reflection of water serve as a “tool” to reflected oneself, both externally and internally. The word “reflection” has different meaning. It can be the illusion of an image produced by mirror or water, and it also means self-examination.

Notion

The notion of this pictorial book is through a series of drawing related to water, reflection and our daily-life, to remind the readers/audiences to reflect the relationship between water and our daily-life.

Introduction of work

My creation is to separate the book into two parts, top and bottom. The top part shows the subject (the real image) and the bottom part shows the reflection. The visual shows a combination of the real subject and the reflection, which form a “dualistic” yet “united” world. Both divided but yet connected one another.

When the surface of water is polluted, the beautiful reflection vanishes. The world been torn apart.

Inspiration

I study the work of both Canadian painter of “magic realism” Rob Gonsalves and Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher. They have created great optical illusion painting. Japanese photographer Palla’s works also gave me a lot of inspiration.

In one of M.C. Escher’s lecturer, he said:

… I hope that science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the borderline between our two respective domains. 1

Execution

One of my concerns is the composition and structure of my image. I am interested to know how image illusion affects our visual perception. I am also interested in creating image symmetrically. Placing symmetrical objects among asymmetrical objects or vise versa create a harmonious composition. When you look at the artwork, you will experience that there are essentially 3 images (1 real image, 1 reflection, 1 overall composition).

In order to get the “right” reflection, I have tried reflecting the image by mirror and flipping it directly in Photoshop to see how the image changes. I also established a grip system on paper and tried to get the reflection by drawing it reverse way.

---

1 Doris Schattsscheneider, M.C. Escher: Vision of Symmetry, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2004

Originally posted in http://sioyean.wordpress.com/ by sioyean on February 25th, 2008