A Painter Whose Inner World Burns with the Colors of Life by Luo Men, 1984
If painters use color and lines to freely express human vision through representational images, then abstraction and surrealism are ways of breathing new life into aesthetic experience. The works displayed by Lo Tsen in this exhibition tend showcase a view of aesthetics that is clearly connected to a distinctly abstract vision.
Lo breaks with the external world of appearance by using colors and lines to pursue the untrammeled inner freedom of emotions and feelings. To that end the sense of abstraction seen in her work is different to that of Chinese landscapes and earlier representational painting, originating as it does in an abstraction born of intangible inner feelings. As a result, the artist’s work can reasonably be classified as belonging to the school of modern abstraction. However, because her paintings make great use of the sense and function of color to stimulate emotions, it is difficult to avoid association with late period color abstract expressionism and its focus on the emotional release afforded by color.
As we stand in the torrent of rapid change that is sweeping modern painting before it some might think that Lo Tsen’s abstract expressionism marks a move away from the Avant-garde and is far from the cutting edge of modern painting art, but her works exist in the reality of her own distinctive creative world and remain replete with qualities that are well worth further discussion.
Lo’s use of lines and color has always attempted to delineate hidden feelings. Indeed, it could be said that color is in her blood and lines are an integral part of her life. If all artistic forms are inseparable from human life, then this is something to which the artist clearly subscribes. Painting is a clue to the true movement of Lo Tsen’s inner life, something that shows us the extent to which she is not merely painting lines but using life to paint. It is this approach that deserves our focus.
The overlapping, vitality and mixture of soft and hard colors, illustrate how the artist’s emotional world is constantly being stimulated and changed faced with various pressures that tend towards seriousness and solemnity. What is more surprising is the extent to which Lo’s flowing emotional world is filled with images of heavy clouds as opposed to the light-floating clouds one might expect, cold stone patterns and metal not the softness of flowing water. This emotive world has the power to make viewers reflect, is infused with a sense of strength and differs from the kind of art most often associated with female artists. Without the strength-of-mind to accept the challenges posed by fate and the determination to speak out through a unique style comprised of color and form, who would know? Even if such ideas cannot be perfectly expressed, it is still more honest than producing paintings filled with fine sounding but empty words. At the very least, Lo Tsen shows herself to be an artist who is steadfastly loyal to artistic creativity and the driving force of her own life, a woman with her own inner visual landscape and vision, both of which are invaluable traits for any artist.
As her colors expand and infuse the entire picture, each colored surface appears fluid, infused with time and life. As a product of deep thought and reflection, the emotions stimulated by this flow cannot be used indiscriminately. It is this invisible restraint that gives the two different orientations their force, whilst their simultaneous existence in the artist’s heart and on the canvas as burning reds and cold blacks mixed and contrasted, allow us to glimpse the depths of her soul. Lo seeks out balance despite existing in conflict and even in the depths of time she still lights beacons of hope, bringing light and warmth to the darkness. In point of fact, those symbolic fires represent the power of spirit, the one thing in which she believes from a life of art. As an artist Lo Tsen expresses the reality of life through the reality of art, showing herself to possess existentialist ideas and to introspectively reflect on life. When art is viewed as an emotional experience explaining the infinite, it cannot be ignored.
If painters use color and lines to freely express human vision through representational images, then abstraction and surrealism are ways of breathing new life into aesthetic experience. The works displayed by Lo Tsen in this exhibition tend showcase a view of aesthetics that is clearly connected to a distinctly abstract vision.
Lo breaks with the external world of appearance by using colors and lines to pursue the untrammeled inner freedom of emotions and feelings. To that end the sense of abstraction seen in her work is different to that of Chinese landscapes and earlier representational painting, originating as it does in an abstraction born of intangible inner feelings. As a result, the artist’s work can reasonably be classified as belonging to the school of modern abstraction. However, because her paintings make great use of the sense and function of color to stimulate emotions, it is difficult to avoid association with late period color abstract expressionism and its focus on the emotional release afforded by color.
As we stand in the torrent of rapid change that is sweeping modern painting before it some might think that Lo Tsen’s abstract expressionism marks a move away from the Avant-garde and is far from the cutting edge of modern painting art, but her works exist in the reality of her own distinctive creative world and remain replete with qualities that are well worth further discussion.
Lo’s use of lines and color has always attempted to delineate hidden feelings. Indeed, it could be said that color is in her blood and lines are an integral part of her life. If all artistic forms are inseparable from human life, then this is something to which the artist clearly subscribes. Painting is a clue to the true movement of Lo Tsen’s inner life, something that shows us the extent to which she is not merely painting lines but using life to paint. It is this approach that deserves our focus.
The overlapping, vitality and mixture of soft and hard colors, illustrate how the artist’s emotional world is constantly being stimulated and changed faced with various pressures that tend towards seriousness and solemnity. What is more surprising is the extent to which Lo’s flowing emotional world is filled with images of heavy clouds as opposed to the light-floating clouds one might expect, cold stone patterns and metal not the softness of flowing water. This emotive world has the power to make viewers reflect, is infused with a sense of strength and differs from the kind of art most often associated with female artists. Without the strength-of-mind to accept the challenges posed by fate and the determination to speak out through a unique style comprised of color and form, who would know? Even if such ideas cannot be perfectly expressed, it is still more honest than producing paintings filled with fine sounding but empty words. At the very least, Lo Tsen shows herself to be an artist who is steadfastly loyal to artistic creativity and the driving force of her own life, a woman with her own inner visual landscape and vision, both of which are invaluable traits for any artist.
As her colors expand and infuse the entire picture, each colored surface appears fluid, infused with time and life. As a product of deep thought and reflection, the emotions stimulated by this flow cannot be used indiscriminately. It is this invisible restraint that gives the two different orientations their force, whilst their simultaneous existence in the artist’s heart and on the canvas as burning reds and cold blacks mixed and contrasted, allow us to glimpse the depths of her soul. Lo seeks out balance despite existing in conflict and even in the depths of time she still lights beacons of hope, bringing light and warmth to the darkness. In point of fact, those symbolic fires represent the power of spirit, the one thing in which she believes from a life of art. As an artist Lo Tsen expresses the reality of life through the reality of art, showing herself to possess existentialist ideas and to introspectively reflect on life. When art is viewed as an emotional experience explaining the infinite, it cannot be ignored.
