Clement Cheng
For decades I worked in corporations while functioning as a “closet” artist/art student on my own time. I am overjoyed to have become a full-time artist in recent years and be able to spend all my available time painting. I paint what my mind sees and senses, not what my eyes see. In my early years, I ardently painted to jazz music. Today my paintings, as with instrumental music, do not reference any specific time, place, subject or event. Rather, they contain mental images which, usually vague or surreal, are aimed to evoke emotions and sensations. I strive to include tension and ambiguity in my paintings, while leaving interpretation open-ended. The viewer is free to embrace the images, and usurp them to create one’s own stories and experiences. I believe that mental images appeal to an intimate level of the subconscious and generate a direct and strong communication. It is my wish that my paintings can emote, as music can. I am particularly passionate about two aspects of painting. First, I am very interested in the manipulation of the field of depth. Since paintings are illusions of 3D subjects on a 2D-plane, I think it is paramount that the painter manipulate the depth in a painting to create the desired impact. Hence, while the Diffusion series often showcases images against infinite depth, the Stratification and Similitude series are highly textural paintings whose “shallow” backgrounds push the images out of the wall towards the viewer. Secondly, despite being an abstract painter, I have a long-standing fascination for the emotional energy that the human figure can portray. I see the figure not as a physical “person”, but as a purveyor of emotion. While not truly a figure painter, I at times venture to incorporate the figure in modern abstract settings, in the Existential series, to express my sentiments on the spiritual, mental and environmental challenges which the human spirit must confront in the world today. WEBSITE www.ccartspace.com EMAIL [email protected] To Page Top |