Having travelled extensively and visited many a european city, it had been a long time since I was so strongly attracted to a place. And I was only passing through Aberdeen for a couple of hours en route from the Cairngorms National Park to take a ferry to the Shetlands on this Scotland trip. Funnily I was just looking for food when I walked up from the bus terminal to what looked like the "Orchard" area. I like the vibes of the city. Maybe it was the genial Scots, maybe it was the students, maybe it was the buildings setting, somehow it felt like I was in Harry Potter land..
Title: Zing (O27)
Autumn is a favourite season of mine, perhaps because I don't live in a place with four seasons and don't have to face the prospects of a bleak cold winter ahead with all the bothersome things associated with it. And coming from a country with tropical greens all-year round, the gloriousness of autumn colours never fails to amaze me.
is exciting to me as well - although spring is a close second preference. But the autumn window is notoriously brief and hard to time, sometimes arriving too early sometimes too late.. but when I did have the privilege to witness the grandeur, it's such a blessing, sigh..
When I decided to paint autumn landscapes, this becomes a natural theme for my experiment with expressionism - a season of change, a season that prompts many thoughts - a season for contemplation ( 静禅 ), solitude ( 独思 ) & decisions ( 抉择 ), the titles of my 3 pieces in this Autumn Thoughts series.
Title: Contemplation (O24,SA26)
Title: Decisions (O26,SA28)
I wanted to do something relaxing for a change. And I'm happiest doing sketches. So when a friend remarked that she likes a mini-acrylic sketch I did last year as a learning piece from an art book which she described as warm and cheerful, I decided to do a full-size sketch work. And I really mean sketch as an end-product.
Title: Sketch Delight (O23,SA11)
Title: Cathedral Mountain (O22,SA25)
After using painting knife for a long spate, I suddenly missed my brushes and decided to try a new approach using short vertical strokes and simplifying the objects in the scene. In a sense, I was gravitating towards the abstract. I was never a realist anyway and more of an impressionist but I needed to establish an identity. Many have said that my colours are distinctive but something more is needed.
Title: Tree And Cathedral Mountain (O21,SA24)
The 2nd piece is based on a pic taken whilst I was in Bhutan doing the Druk Path Trek which is a 5-day trek from Paro to the capital Thimphu. Let's just say it was a very himalayan adventure ;p
Title: Approaching Storm II (O18,SA10)
To round off my cloud-themed series, I decided to do 2 works simultaneously that involved clouds in the backdrop. As it turned out, both reference pics I chose happened to have mountains.
Title: Approaching Storm I (O18,SA9)
This is an interesting piece that seems to provoke rather diverse comments. When I created it, I was simply looking to develop my cloud series and found this moody cloud-church pic from my europe trip 3 years ago.
Title: Cloud Series ~ The Dome (O17,SA8)
Finally, I had to do a painting on the wonderful collectibles of our host - photographer-cum-vintage collector-cum many other interests - one Simon Wong's house in Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula, which is incidentally an area with plentiful flea markets and op-shops (viz charity antique shops). Many an evening we spent listening to his oldies vinyl records, like this Beatles one, on his antique gramophone going round and round..
This nice cream-coloured table was by the window and one afternoon, the sun rays came beautifully through the blinds creating an intricate lace pattern on Simon's "gu dong" stuff. Naturally all of us present couldn't resist whipping our cameras or mobiles to capture the effect.
Title: Mornington Peninsula ~ Simon's Vintage Stuff (O14, SA5)
Besides outdoors, the Mornington Peninsula area also has charming restaurants. This particular one called Boathouse is beside an art gallery and we spent a leisurely afternoon having long discourses over tea and cakes in the al fresco sitting at the back which is beside a river and has lovely greenery filtering the sun rays much like a Monet painting.
The trip to the Mornington Peninsula has got to be my most productive art trip ever because I continued to paint it long after getting home to Singapore, testament indeed to the wonderful lighting and strong colours of the place, the feelings it invokes and why it is a popular artist enclave.
Title: Mornington Peninsula ~ London Bridge (O12,SA3)
To complete the trilogy of 'decent' plein air works from the memorable art trip down under, this one was done at a secret secret place by virtue of the fact that we had a tip from a local artist and still took a few wrong turnings before finding this wonderful trail.
Title: Mornington Peninsula ~ Sorrento Portsea Artists Trail (A8)
My 2nd favourite piece from the art trip is this "Budha Palm" rock at Cape Schanck which just screams to be painted. Okay I'm exaggerating. But this unusual rock formation which we had to lug our stuff all the way down an eternal flight of wooden bridge steps to reach did give us all The Feeling, so to speak, to start work immediately.
Title: Mornington Peninsula ~ Cape Schanck (A7)
I've written about this amazingly fun art trip down under before so I'd concentrate on the artworks, starting with one of my favourites which somehow everything clicked just nicely for this plein air piece.
The reference photo for this piece was taken on the famous 100-mile Klondike Highway from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, paralleling the White Pass Trail of the 1897-98 Klondike Gold Rush. I love this shot because it shows the winding road flanked by tumbling autumn slopes with majestic snow-laden mountains interpersed in clouds looming ahead. Everything folds into a kaleidoscopic centre where the highway appears to dip into a lake, hinting at the drama and spectacle that lays ahead.
I have a penchant for using moody reference photos with muted colours for my paintings because they give free rein to my imagination and I am not so influenced or constrained by the local colours. I am also a believer that a painting should not copy the original photo or scene slavishly, or I may as well take a photograph instead. In any case, my photos are works in their own right for that medium, at least I think so ;p As a result, I am not a realist painter and have strong leanings towards Impressionists and post-Impressionists styles. 
Title: Seasons ~ Winter Wonderland (O7)
A couple years back, I took a hiatus from work and went gallivanting in France & Scandinavia for a good 2 months, which was altogether fun, funny and challenging since I speak no French.. ;p But I had to visit the art museums in France (and they are really good - when they are not closed ;p ) and pay pilgrimage to the land of my favourite Impressionist artists. So naturally I made my way to Provence and ambled into Arles, which I learned to be Vincent van Gogh's place except there wasn't a painting of his there and his studio had been destroyed in WWII. Nevertheless, I was much inspired by the place, especially the lovely uneven buildings with multi-coloured tiled roof intertwined in a fascinating maze of narrow winding streets, which probably accounts for this being considered Van Gogh's most creative period.
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