Vanitas 31 "The Call"

The piece I finished earlier this year (before I finished "Spring") but did not have a chance to share online. I had to wait until the show with this piece being part of was officially advertised on social media. It is "Vanitas 31" and subtitled "The Call". I came up with the concept and produced this drawing after receiving an invitation from Beautiful Bizarre Magazine to exhibit my work in their upcoming group show called "Halcyon Days". The show is going to take place in November 2022 at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco, California. The theme of the exhibition is longing for long-gone happier and more peaceful days. I intended this piece to talk about a kind of call to action, hence the title "The Call". The action it is suggesting is not a violent upheaval but rather a personal imaginative kind. My model is about to release her paper plane. She doesn't know where it is going, but wishes it will reach its right destination, a happier place, past or future. The color of the plane reflects the blue of the skies in the happier times.

Looking back, I think I was subconsciously influenced by the January 6th insurrection last year and what happened afterwards. Watching those right wing extremists storming the Capital building and seeing people getting beat up and killed on the screen disturbed me tremendously and I was also infuriated when some people even sympathized with those behaviors.

I was listening to Mal Waldron's "The Call" when I was working on this drawing coincidentally. It is a dark brooding tune and reflected my emotional state at the time. And I thought the title perfectly fit the theme of the piece.

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize Finalist

For the 3rd time my work was chosen to be one of the finalists for the 50 RAYMAR Traditional Art Award Finalists of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize! I feel so honored and humbled to be included in this group of crazy talented artists. The quality of the submitted art works has been consistently getting higher and the competition getting stiffer every year. That makes being selected even more special.

Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2021

I received an email that my submission "Vanitas 25" for Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize was selected as one of the 35 finalists in the Raymar Traditional Art Award category. This is the second time in these 2 years that my art was selected as one of the finalists. I am in a good company of many super talented artists whose works I truly admire and whom I follow on social media. Quite a few of them are also represented by Arcadia Contemporary. Here is the link to see all the finalists.

Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize Finalist!

Well, this is truly unexpected and exciting. I got an email from Beautiful Bizarre Magazine today and they told me my entry "Vanitas 11" to their 2020 Art Prize competition was accepted as one of the finalists. There are 4 categories in this competition: Sculpture, Digital Art, Photography, and Traditional Art. I am in the Traditional Art category. They selected 25 finalists in each category from god knows how many entries, so this was a really stiff competition and being on the shortlist of top 100 is a really big deal! The chance of me winning one of the top prizes would be pretty slim, but there is a people's awards category. The voting starts on 9/24, maybe I should tell all my friends to vote for me (keep dreaming).