Naughty Boy’s “Boyhood”

Posted on September 21, 2020 by mfsadmin

Depicting human beings is both challenging and exciting, because of the complexity of the human emotions, and the viewers’ familiarity with expressions and postures associated with these emotions, which suffers no falsehood.

My recent Boyhood attempted to capture the instance when a confident and cocky urchin, insistently pressed himself upon the viewers, announcing his presence. Though a little naughty, he still possessed his innocence, and his wonderment at the broader world surrounding him was palpably touching, and hopefully would viewers of their tender ages.

The background was sparse, and open, allowing much space for the boy to occupy, except for a pair of moving legs towards the center space and seemingly poised to displace the boy. Perhaps, it was the man he was to become. The confluence of presence and future was both touching and a bit unnerving.

Boyhood
28”x22”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

Dancing “Hordes”

Posted on July 28, 2020 by mfsadmin

My Hordes is one of several paintings that examines herd behaviors of small objects. Resembling new sprouts on thin stalks, or small moths or butterflies, or microbes, here they sway about and dance rather coquettishly against an almost inviting orange-hued background. Though less menacing compared to those in Whirring, they still manage to stir some unease regarding things invisible, during our current protracted Coronavirus pandemic.

Hordes
20”x30”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

Featured Painting – Silent Party

Posted on May 22, 2020 by mfsadmin

Starting this horizontal group portrait in a somewhat more upbeat time, employing a colorful palette, I aimed to create a group of people engaged in dialogues and interactions. However, during the painting process, those figures took more and more an air of despondency, and the vibrant colors started to become untruthful and had to fade. A couple of months later, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the piece was finally completed, it had morphed into a monochromatic nightmarish hallucination, featuring some sketchily painted heads, shrouded in white gauze, turning into different directions, strikingly silhouetted against pitch dark background, and emoting resignation, sadness, and anger. Though compressed in space, they seemed hardly related to one another, and remained in utter isolation; a party without conversation. To their left, a jumble of cantilevered structures protruded from the distance, adding an atmosphere of foreboding and disintegration. This painting ended with a sad wailing note, aptly echoing the signs reverberating in our daunting time.

Silent Party
18”x36”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

Featured Painting – Diptych “19”

Posted on March 16, 2020 by mfsadmin

Missing making art in a community and the interaction with fellow artists, I decided to participate in a painting workshop, and one of the assignments was a small diptych, with one of them to have more and the other less paint. I did my best to capture the fear and resilience of people under threat from Coronavirus. This diptych is aptly titled “19”.

I hope that this small diptych, double portraits of a mask-wearing man and a woman, alert, vigilant, a tad fearful, yet resolute, titled 19, would give viewers a sense of fellowship, and fortify our resilience.

19, oil on canvas, 14"x11" & 14"x11", 2020 — 19, oil on canvas, 14″x11″ & 14″x11″, 2020

19
14”x11” & 14”x11”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020

Featured Painting – Emergence

Posted on January 26, 2020 by mfsadmin

At first glance, Emergence is a calm sliver of routine life due to the simplicity of its composition and color scheme; upon closer inspection, what emerged from this picture was not so simple, rather it revealed something indecipherable and with a hint of sinisterness: against a sparse backdrop, a few curious looking, semi-translucent figures floated like ghosts from behind thin vertical bars, which made the whole landscape reminisce of a jail cell, despite the openness of those bars. What was emerging? Inner strength? Outside menace? Guilty conscience? Or stoical indifference to anyone’s fate?

Emergence
22” x 28”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2019

Featured Painting, Whirring

Posted on December 7, 2019 by mfsadmin

The difference between the sublime and the terrifying can be surprisingly inconsequential as demonstrated in my new oil painting Whirring, which depicts a kaleidoscope of butterflies, bursting from compact layers of black and brown loam. Individually, each of these quivering insects emits delicate beauty; yet, in league, they form a confusing mass, incomprehensible and overwhelming, and the lively pattern they weave becomes rather terrifying.

Whirring
20” x 30”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2019

Featured Painting – Quarry

Posted on October 15, 2019 by mfsadmin

Eerie stillness was a sense I tried to convey when I made the oil painting, Quarry, which was bleached of colors, as if they would have been intrusive in such a disused quarry, which seemed demanding viewers to hold breaths, and surrender to an overwhelming hush and foreboding, closed in by the knife-sharp white cliffs, and the deep pool of inky dead water captured in the middle. Nature, ravaged.

Quarry
24” x 30”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2019

Featured Painting – Desolate Souls of Main Street

Posted on August 1, 2019 by mfsadmin

In recent decades, the economic inequality in the world, propelled by the ever-greedy corporations and individuals, and aided or even championed by purchased colluding governments of various dominance and ideologies, has widened drastically, and the divide between the haves and have-nots has become such an insurmountable gulf that the people behind are increasingly unable to sustain themselves, let alone catching up with those sitting on top of the socioeconomic pyramid. My The Desolates Souls of Main Street attempts to give a tiny protesting voice to the voiceless and faceless downtrodden, whose dire situation, in contrast to the mind-boggling glitzy world of the gilded, is as heart-wrecking as it is damning.

Desolate Souls of Main Street
22” x 28”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2019

Featured Painting – Weave

Posted on June 11, 2019 by mfsadmin

My small gouache painting Weave served as a little window to a bigger universe, literally and figuratively, opening to a vast expanse of sky and ocean, which emerged from alternating tall windows and hedges in the foreground. The painting is quite still, as it was dominated by the forlorn and hushed landscape; yet it was also dynamic, with the sky streaked with dark clouds, and blue ocean interrupted by light and dark waves, and the hedges grew wild and almost hallucinative, twisting their relationship to the windows and the outside world into optical confusion. One small relief was the disc of the sun floating atop, providing a counterpoint to the dissonance below, even though its presence, obscured somewhat by wisps of clouds, was rather bleached.

Wave
11” x 14”
Gouache on Paper
Completed in 2019

Featured Painting – Piñatas

Posted on April 18, 2019 by mfsadmin

Through a blurry, fluid, and background randomly dissected by some diagonal strokes, several uncertain, twisted, and sad faces emerged, telegraphing the terrified and oppressed people in our uncertain and increasingly inhospitable time and climate, and they were my observation and report in my recent painting Piñatas. The fear, the apprehension in their averting eyes, and the tears streaming down their downcast faces, pulled in and turned away the viewers by our collective shame over our helpless fates and our inability to avoid disasters. We were all beaten piñatas.

Piñatas
24” x 30”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2019

Matthew Felix Sun

— Award-Winning San Francisco Bay Area Fine Artist