Farewell, my friend

This drawing is for one of my best friends who will go back to Taiwan next month. We can never tell which one is better--stay or leave. The best we can do is to try to live an abundant life and help as many people as we could. Then, don't regret you have this life!

Facing obstacle...

Be careful!

Women always say that most men are playboys. What about women themselves?

Uncertainty

When facing obstacles, conflicts, uncertainty, and depression, how would you react? This is one of our darkest time, and the way you're facing them--circumvention, denial, or fight--determine your future.

Confusion

When we face the injustice in society with our hands full of its products, we will start to doubt about ourselves. And what accompanies with this ambiguity is the self-consciousness of our guilt and shame. This process of self-doubt is what makes you a better person. Even you have to make a clear decision at certain levels in your life, the struggle for an unified self is what push us to have a greater understanding of our life and the world.

The Cup

This iron cup is all what its owner has.

Who can decide it?

I have been reading articles about the definition of public and private space for two weeks. Hannah Arendt thinks public space is where human beings can really be immortal, but people shouldn't bring issues about labor and worker into public sphere. Liberalists encourage everyone joins public space, but individuals have to remain neutral and to abandon issues about moral. Habermas also include everyone into public space in which everything can be discussed. However, the lack of separation between public and private, and his neglect of the methods to implement public participation have made his theory unattainable...

Ok, who care these shits? To be honest, even I know hundreds of reasons why the understanding of public and private space can benefit me, there is no use to talk about it. Writing this blog can be said as public participation, but hello, is there anyone who think we're participating public affairs through reading and writing blog posts?

When people don't have the rights to speak in public, they fight for it with their lives. But when finally they're free to speak in the public, they realize that they have nothing to say. Oh yeah, many bloggers will love to share with you about the countries they've been and the scrumptious food they've last night. I've definitely notice that the information about consumption on blogs is useful.

If no one is reading about this post, I would be really happy. After all, this is just one more useless string of electronic codes embedded in the hullabaloo of blogosphere.

You have to leave

This is one of the images in my dream last night. I feel that it's not a bad thing to leave the place where you were born. You get your freedom. However, you will miss this place all you life.

Where am I going?

I am looking for a fall internship in this summer. Drifting in the sea of job fair, I am searching for a vertigo to engorge me. Last night, I found out my friend who works in an advertising agency is working overtime at Sunday night. I thought this was Taiwanese adverstising agencies' characteristic--abusing their employees 7 days a week. It seems like everywhere the advertising industry is almost the same.

Another friend rebutted me that at least people earn more in New York than in Taiwan. But is money the whole story to explain why we have to work ourselves to exhaustion? Is money the cause for me to die for? If we all have to work till we die, why don't we work for someone we admire, not just for money? Apple, Pepsi and Toyota can find the most talented college graduates to work for them, because they convinced the youths that together they can change the world. I don't believe them, but I agree we need a meaning for our sacrifice.

I can still talk about ideal, but if I can't find a job after this year I better shut up.

Color practice

The Death

Today is my last class in this semester. As some of you know, this blog is part of my class assignment. That's mean my professor might come to this blog and see what I'm doing. However, we have already finish our final, and I think the professor already gives us our grades.

So from now on, I will just draw anything that comes into my head. No matter how wield it is. The topic of the painting above is "The Death." If there is Death, I hope "she" is beautiful.

Waiting

Who are you waiting for?

Man's search for meaning

Don't ask the meaning of life; ask what life expects from you. Life has no general meaning. As Viktor E. Frankl points out, "life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

Professor Paul Levinson once asked us about what we want--fame, power, or money--in the future. At that time, I was the only one in class who chose fame. Now, I think I have a better answer. I want to find a meaning to my life.

Cia Guo-Qiang and Chinese ink painting

I saw Cai Guo-Qiang's I want to belive in Guggenheim in New York today. The first time I heard his name was about four years ago when my teacher of Chinese ink painting talked about the new creative Chinese artists. I know some of his works exhibit in Taiwan, but I never have the chance to see them. Now, I meet his art work in New York City. I am really proud of this guy.

Cia Guo-Qiang is one of the most creative artists trying to break the old definition of traditional Chinese ink painting. Most of his large-scale drawings are made from igniting gunpoder and fuses laid on fibrous paper, and the reasults like the diffusion of black ink. He make the process of "explosion events" more creative than the art work itself, and you can feel every piece of it contains certain unplanned remainer of explosive matters.

Cia Guo-Qinag's work reminds me the good thing about Chinese ink painting. Once you practice Chinese ink painting, you can't be a tyranny or despot, because ink is so difficult to control on fibrous paper and you have to respect every single brush stroke. Artists, especially Chinese ink artists, have to know the preciousness of unpredictable results of ink diffusion. You can't erase the ink marks that you are not satisfied. You have to live with it, and try to intergrate them into the whole painting. Chinese ink painting is about letting go your ego, and learning how to appreciate every thing that is different from you.

The face of an Indian woman

New York is a good place for me to observe the faces of people from different countries. Sometimes, I will stare at somebody's face, try to memorize it, go home and draw it down. For me, drawing is a leisure activity, and writing in English is more like a job. In this aspect, painting should be my first language.

The feeling of the unpredictable future

Something has happened. Is it just my pessimism? Or maybe its the malfunction of my sensorium. Surfing the Internet seems like a form of escapism. What's waiting for us is our unrecognizable face. We lie to ourselves that everything will be the same. But the future is just another word for end.

Enjoy your life.

girl, F train, memory

Subway is a wonderful place for me to observe human faces. This is a girl I saw on F train today. I didn't want to take out a camera and take her pictures, so I kept her image in my head. On the paper, I can recreate the image. My memory, therefore, is preserved on the paper, and because of this painting, my memory exists.

Image, girl, and ink

This is a practice of ink painting. She is not any particular girl I know, although I do use someone's image in my brain (not picture) to draw her.

I seldom put water colors and black ink together. The result is not bad. The problem is the shape of human face. It's....strange. I used to draw asian girl. Maybe that's the reason why I feel the face is a little weird. Or, I should start practising sketch.