Action Research 3

In this unit, apart from last time, I have a pretty clear plan in very begining, I want to paint 3 big oil paintings.

Here are my drafts made by ipad.

I still want to explore the use of visual illusion in my works. And I found a interesting word that explains the visual phenomenon in my works: Pareidolia (when random images or sounds are perceived as significant, such as clouds look like the leaves of branches). And this time I want to give audience a environment through large scale.

First of all, I decided to paint the first one.

I tried different materials on different medias. What did I feel is that these to paintings are too normal, they may have that kind of feeling I want to express, but it's still not strong enough. In my opinion, it might caused by the realistic style image, or maybe the power of small pictures is not enough to express what I want to convey.

After those experiments, I decided to begin to paint on big canvas directly.

Working without workshop is a big challenge for me. I finally set my canvas on my closet after passing thousands of difficulties. In the end I finished this work, the title is 'Water, branches, cloud', it's a 160cm wide and 120cm high oil painting.

The purpose of my works is to create a space when the viewer stares at it, they can enter a state of meditation and get a complex emotional experience. This experience will be diverse, difficult to summarize, and has a somehow personalized feeling. In this painting, I use the principle of Pareidolia to give people a vague feeling by interlacing the various elements in the picture. In my opinion, it implies that people will project their subconscious and unconscious emotions and memories onto objective objects. I hope to use this way to arouse the illusions and emotions of the viewers. The shape of the branch and the color of the painting make it has some religious sense of holiness and mystery, which can make the viewer more peaceful to see.

Exhibition virtual effects:

In the process of making this painting, I met some challenges.

1. I want background to be a free and empty space, so I painted very thin. the difficulty is that I must fill the background color so quickly, otherwise I can not do some adjusts after the paint dry.

2. After I finish the background part (blue space and the purple cloud), I found out that because the color is very thin, It's hard to make changes on it if I draw the wrong colors or lines. It made me a little constrained and afraid to make big changes on it.

3. The tree is really hard to paint, this is the first time I draw a black side line for a tree, I expect to make the tree more religious, strange and a little bit dangerous. But that makes me feel difficult to further depict.

I try to make a breakthrough as far as possible without breaking the background. My depiction of the picture focuses on the tree, reflection and root. I also revise it repeatedly, struggling for a long time on the tree, and finally decide to present it in this appearance.

At first, after painting the background, I felt that the color purity was a little high, but the background was dry and it was not convenient to modify it. My solution was to draw the lake water with high purity blue, which immediately made the background color less intense than before and far behind.

The most interesting thing is that because this painting is right next to my bed, sometimes I can watch it in the dark when I wake up in the middle of the night, so it means that I can look at it at any time. Under the influence of different light, it presents different colors, which makes me think of James turrel's art work which in a volcano. I often stare at it into a state of meditation.

I originally planned to draw three large paintings, but as the situation changed, I did not intend to follow the original plan.

First of all, because of some unexpected things, I spent more time on this painting than I planned.

Secondly, what I wanted to express has basically been achieved in this painting, and has produced a lot of effects that I did not expect before.

Thirdly, I am very satisfied with this painting, that is also a reason why I stop paint the others. Besides, because I am in the weeks of moving recently, my room is not able to continue to paint large-scale oil paintings.

As a result I decided to change my method. I began to plan to do some experimental works that can be done everywhere without being limited by objective conditions.

In the end, I made a serious of iphone notes experimental poem

Due to the differences between Chinese character and English letter, I can not make a English version for them in the same form, so I will only give the translation.

This world is a psychiatric hospital

Some people know they are sick

Some people do not know

People do not stop to treat

People only keep going

Carefully slowly

Proudly hardly

Before leaving

Painfully

Regretfully

Say goodbye

I do this series because I want to record my daily thinking. As I said before, it's easy for me to fall into philosophical thinking about something everyday, which makes me always full of creative desire, but I can't find a good way to record and express it.

Therefore, thanks to the portability and flexibility of this way, I have a very good creative way. I used to write poetry, but I didn't seem to be satisfied with simple words. That's why I chose to match it with painting.

Memory pillow wears a floral dress

My memory pillow has Alzheimer's disease

I have a memory pillow

She can remember my shape

But one day I found out that she got Alzheimer’s disease

She can not remember her original shape

And my shape

I was sad

I dressed her in a floral dress

I draw directly on the small screen of my mobile phone with my finger. The finger is obviously too large for the screen. It is very difficult to control when drawing. I draw very hard and clumsy. But it brings me a lot of unexpected fun. The uncontrollability of the picture also adds interest to the picture.

When I close my eyes

All shapes disappear in black

My body also disappears in black

I walk in black

No foot

No direction

No purpose

When I get used to black

Black is no longer black

I gaze at the path of lightning

Lightning turns into a man's side face

Lighting lights up the black lake

There is a lonely tree in the middle of lake

The branches have no leaves

The roots grow downward

Insert a heart

Become her blood vessel

I came to her

Reach out and touch her

She is so hot

The temperature follows the roots

Ignite the branches

She is so cold

The lake is also frozen into ice

I follow the blood vessels into the heart

Stop thinking

When I wrote the first poem, I noticed the shape of the image composed of the words of the whole poem. I think it belongs to the visual expression part of the poem. I can also do a lot of exploration here, so after that, the text part of my poem also began to become pictorial and symbolic.

The shape of tree

Tree is the shape of blood vessels

Tree is the shape of the veins

Tree is the shape of history

Tree is the shape of memory

Tree is the shape of thought

Tree is the shape of everything

Tree is the shape of world

Tree is the shape of universe

Tree is the shape of truth

Between circle

Star is round

Moon is round

Earth is round

Sun is round

Human is not round

Cell is round

Molecule is round

Atom is round

Neutron is round

Meaningless poem

This last poem is very special, it's a meaningless poem. In this poem, I deconstruct the Chinese character "boring" to make the word changes constantly (write the Chinese phonetic alphabet of this word, then write the word in reverse, then transliterate it into Chinese characters, and continue to write the Chinese phonetic alphabet, which is used as a rule to deconstruct). Finally, it becomes a meaningless and infinite cycle. This poem not only represents my state of emptiness and boredom, but also explores the meaning of existence and the law of the world.