Chapter 2: Jealousy of "perfection"
The second series of work highlights jealousy of "perfection" through "impressionistic" portraitures of classmates and family members. When painting faces of others, one has to make swift and spontaneous judgements in hope of capturing the "target" to perfection; in addition, establish "conversations" that highlight self-identity/acceptance: what motivates an artist to paint/draw the figure, and what are the visible physical/spiritual "attraction". Similar to Unit 1, the paintings are playful and surrealistic; however, the visual language focuses less on application of narrative but idea of self-imperfection and possible "solutions". The creatures in the background represent the fading presence of "past" self in a contemporary space; as for the items of selection, they are fruits of intuition and occasionally ingrained with "lessons" from painted personalities. The paintings are mostly done on unstretched canvases with little to no medium/thinner; in addition, the canvases are barely gesso'd- brushes that are dry and coarse generate sounds painful to ear but pleasing to "hear". Artists like Alice Neel, Mike Nelson, and Mathew Hansel motivate me to interpret identity as a temporary product of the environment; also, understand how perceptions of others are generated and used in perfecting self deficiencies.