An Artist’s Life 藝術生涯
2015
Oil on canvas
66cm x 85cm
This is my rendition of a painting described in the novel Rosshalde, by Herman Hesse. It is of a fisherman on his small skiff with two fishes he caught. I read this book 20 years ago, and the image of the fisherman stayed with me all these years but it is until now that I felt I’d gain enough maturity and experience to paint this image. I attempted to paint the work as faithfully as described in the novel, but there are some things that escape this ‘translation’: What was the weather like, the ethnicity of the fisherman, his cloths, the type of fish, the kind of wood in which the boat is made of, etc.
I lived far from the land inhabited by this fictional fisherman. Although I felt his existential angst, I could only depict his surroundings in the way I understand my surrounding and how this influence my thoughts and feelings. Like the fisherman, I am surrounded by my circumstances, my yield dependent on what my environment bestow upon me.