Projects
Heading 2
Sắc Việt
Tên tranh
Whispers by the Lotus Pond
Con cò bay lả bay la,
Bay từ cửa phủ bay ra cánh đồng.
(Folk verse)
The egret glides, light and lilting,
From the prefect’s gate out to the open fields.
Two egrets stand close among drifting lotus leaves, wrapped in soft shades of rose and blue. I wanted this painting to feel like a quiet conversation, gentle and unhurried. Their necks curve toward each other the way two people lean in to share a secret, and the lotus stems drift beside them like long, unfinished sentences. There is no hurry in the water and no wind to carry the words away, only the hush that settles over a pond when the day grows tired. In Vietnamese folk songs, the egret is the bird that moves between the village and the open fields, carrying small joys and small sorrows on its wings. Here I let two of them rest, side by side, and simply listen.
Trong đầm gì đẹp bằng sen,
Lá xanh bông trắng lại chen nhị vàng.
Nhị vàng bông trắng lá xanh,
Gần bùn mà chẳng hôi tanh mùi bùn.
(Folk verse)
In the pond, what is lovelier than the lotus?
Green leaves, white petals, with golden stamens in between.
Golden stamens, white petals, green leaves,
Though it grows beside the mud, it never takes on the smell of the mud.
:
I painted this egret with her head turned, as if she had just heard someone call her name from across the water. Beside her, a lotus holds its pale blue petals half open, and a great leaf the colour of dusk spreads behind her like a folded umbrella. In Vietnamese folk songs, the lotus is the flower that grows beside the mud yet never carries its scent, and the egret is the quiet bird of the countryside: white, modest, patient. Together they became my picture of gentleness that stays whole in an imperfect world. I let the colours melt softly into the silk, so that the rose of the sky and the blue of the leaves blend into one another the way a memory does.
Rising Pure from the Pond
Wading into Evening
Con cò lặn lội bờ sông,
Gánh gạo nuôi chồng tiếng khóc nỉ non.
(Folk verse)
The egret wades and toils along the riverbank,
Shouldering rice to feed her husband, her weeping soft and sorrowful.
I chose to paint this egret alone, at the hour when the sky turns the pink of the inside of a shell. She bends toward the water with the patience of someone who has done this every evening of her life, while bamboo leans in from the right and a small pale moon waits above the hills. In the old folk song, the egret is the Vietnamese woman herself, wading through rivers and years, carrying others before she carries herself. I wanted to paint her at a moment of rest inside the work: the water held still, the light slow, her labour made gentle. Her patience, to me, is its own kind of beauty.
Đông Hồ folk prints, carved into woodblocks and printed in natural colours on paper dusted with ground shell, have welcomed the Lunar New Year into Vietnamese homes for generations. I wanted to carry that spirit onto silk, and I found that the story needed two paintings to be told whole.
Side by side, they became a single morning to me: the rooster who calls the light in, and the hen who keeps it warm. On silk, the flat, joyful colours of the woodblock begin to glow, and an old village art takes on a new and gentler light.
Dawn and Hearth
Beneath the Willow Veil
Gió đưa cành trúc la đà,
Tiếng chuông Trấn Vũ canh gà Thọ Xương.
Mịt mù khói tỏa ngàn sương,
Nhịp chày Yên Thái mặt gương Tây Hồ.
(Folk verse)
Wind sways the bamboo in a slow, lilting dance;
Trấn Vũ’s bell rings out, roosters crow in Thọ Xương.
Mist and smoke spread through a thousand veils of fog;
Pestles beat in Yên Thái, and West Lake gleams like a mirror.
She leans into the hush of an afternoon, one hand lifted to her hair, her eyes closed as if she were listening to the leaves. Willow fronds hang behind her like a curtain of slow rain, and two small brown birds hop along the edge of the pale lavender path that curls around her. I wanted the áo dài to feel less like formal dress and more like a second skin of calm, soft green against softer green, so that she almost becomes part of the garden. It is the mood of a Hanoi afternoon, when the wind moves the branches and nothing is asked of you.
Trúc xinh trúc mọc đầu đình,
Em xinh em đứng một mình cũng xinh.
(Folk verse)
Lovely bamboo grows by the village gate;
I am lovely too, even standing alone.
She looks out at us calmly, as though the afternoon had all the time in the world. Her áo dài is the soft violet of dusk, and behind her spreads a wash of warm gold, the colour of lamplight falling across silk. In her hands, a bouquet of red gladioli rests like a small, quiet flame. I thought of the white áo dài that Vietnamese girls have worn for generations, a garment that follows the body without hiding the person inside it, and wanted to give that grace a different colour. The folk verse says a girl is lovely even when she stands alone. I painted that feeling: a self-possession so gentle it needs no announcement.
Lilac Hours
A Bouquet Held Close
Thân em như tấm lụa đào,
Phất phơ giữa chợ biết vào tay ai.
(Folk verse)
I am like a length of rose-coloured silk,
Fluttering in the marketplace: whose hands will I fall into?
She sits with her head bowed, long black hair falling like ink over her shoulder, a sheaf of red gladioli resting in the crook of her arm. The green of her áo dài is the green of young rice and early mornings, and the earth beneath her is deep and warm. I imagined the moment just after someone has said something tender, when the eyes lower and the heart grows louder than the room. The old folk song compares a woman to a length of silk drifting through the market, waiting to see whose hands will receive her. Painting on silk, I wanted to answer that line gently: she is the silk, yes, but she is also the one holding the flowers.
