artist's diary

Twenty years ago, I was fascinated by the beauty of the fine arts and desirous to learn the drawing. However, as an ungifted kid with a great diffidence deeply in the heart, I always hesitated to draw —— can I draw the lines in the right place? Can I paint the colors in a harmonious way? This kind of diffidence led me to another way of life —— I became a normal adult struggling with the normal life. But there were always something commotion beneath the surface of the normal life, and this commotion led me back to art again —— about 1 year ago, I started to learn drawing and painting from the very beginning. At that time, I delightedly found myself can see something that other person cannot see. Unexpectedly, I absorbed the traditional art techniques like the sponge and sometimes could impress people with the realistic pictures. However, as I made progress with my technique I lost my spirits unawares, which is the most important thing in art. Until one day, the instructor asked me the question —— “What do you want to express?”

All of sudden, I realized drawing technically well alone meant nothing. I love drawing not only because I like to impress people, but also because I want to say something by my charcoal. Then I reviewed the drawings of the contemporary artists in VITAMIN D, I got a totally new perspective of them, especially Yoshitomo Nara’s little girls. My first impression of Nara’s drawing was: there were just illustrations. But when I reviewed it, I strongly felt the rebellion nature of humanity came alive through his robust, manga-looking figures. The images are accessible, arbitrarily drawn, the narrations are compelling and rough, and any viewer can interpret them in a deeply personal way. As an 80′s grew up with mangas, comics and animations, I found those primitive and innocent images stoke my heart by evoking the little me who was lost in my adult body years ago, reminding me that the fable of love and loneliness had never lost its power. Large crescent eyes, sneer on the lips, Nara’s vulnerable little girls are standing up defiantly to the world of adults. The drawings show the Nara’s nostalgic for the childhood, which is always an inseverable part inside the adults. The part that is showing the refusal to make the soul slave of the body, the part that loves simple ways of life and that is somewhat impatient with the business of making money. Nara’s drawings bring the emotion of inquietude and angry from his heart and arouse the sympathetic response from the viewers. He breaks the rules of traditional aesthetic, Asian kitsch and Disney dreams, just like his characters fight against the ordinary boring adult life —— with self-confidence, self-determination, individuality and freedom, which all the actists would learn from.

Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing by Emma Dexter (Author)