Sketches of the Times

The world you live, the mind you hide. Pictures depicting the socio-political atmosphere of the times, emotions of the insignificant, were displayed in my first Vines Series exhibition: ‘Sketches of the Times’, from 12 January to 23 February 2019. This solo consists of the paintings I produced in the past three years in my after hours. I dealt with these talks-of-the-town as a reporter in day-to-day assignments and I retrospected them at the tips of my brushes when I left my news room. This exhibition means so much to me as it puts a full stop to my career as a political reporter as well as kicks off my life as an artist.

外在大世界，我的私世界。《時代的素描》展示的都是當下社會的轉變，社會、政治環境下小人物的所感所想。展期由一九年一月十二日至二月二十三日，近兩個月，是我「藤蔓系列」的第一擊，都是過去三年離開採訪室後、爬上睡床前繪畫的作品。拿著記者簿，走在時事脈搏的前緣，畫筆卻給予我一個沉澱的空間。如一格格影片倒放，再慢放，擎在調色板上的靜默讓刺激的時事新聞變形，蛻化，畫成記者生涯的一個「句號」。於是，我以創作人的身份再上征途。

‘The Well’ and ‘Fragments’ drew most of the attentions. To my surprise, quite a number of people with design background came to my show and said they were attracted by the colorful style of this series.

在展出作品中，《坐井》與《碎變》較受注視，而畫作色彩斑駁的特質，也吸引不少有設計背景的朋友到來參觀。

In addition to exhibiting paintings, I held a workshop inviting participants to paint on the same canvas under the theme of ‘dreams and history’. The key concept of this painting game is to ask participants to paint on top of the pictures of the precedents. Layers of paintings produced put the dreams of the previous participants to the bottom layers. Very interesting points were raised, like: could we paint our dreams in a relay? If I cover all the old paintings with white and start over again, would I achieve equality?

除卻展出畫作，我也邀請朋友齊齊畫。以「夢想與歷史」為題，大家在同一幅畫布上畫畫，讓後來者的新畫，覆蓋在前者的舊畫之上，層層疊，於是每一位參與者的作品，最終都沉積在「歷史洪流」的底層。有朋友反問：「我們能接力畫大家的夢想嗎？」「若我把所有都蓋上白色，重頭再來，這樣會不會更加公平？」