Statement


My recent paintings depict trolls, gnomes, and goblins that appear joyous and eternally optimistic. These creatures are bathed in a sweet, ambrosial light and seem inexplicably content in their misty, atmospheric setting.

In these paintings, I try to convey an ominous yet nebulous undercurrent that lurks beneath this veneer of dreamy pleasantry. These paintings spring from traditional painterly realism with their brushwork and painterly succulence; and they glance back to the chiaroscuro of Chardin and the lush, pyrotechnical brushwork of Frans Hal and John Singer Sargent. Concurrently, these paintings' colors are pumped to a steroidal intensity and their brushwork exaggerated to a hysterical grandiosity. In doing so, these paintings' traditional underpinning is mutated to embrace the fast paced technicolor of modernity, and ventures beyond the interpretive confines now freed by the pluralism of contemporary art.

Dik F. Liu   Summer '10


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