Dr. Lam’s Art

This acrylic painting on 24 x 36” board is entitled “Walk in the Woods with Wolf”. The title comes from one of my favorite artists Wolf Kahn, whose bright landscape style is actually much more reductionistic than what I’ve done here, as I have leaned toward complexity. If you blow up the painting, you will see that I used a different impressionistic style for each part of the background, including pointillism, radial brush strokes, horizontal brush strokes, and circular strokes. The color also changes throughout. I contrast the horizontal background with the vertical foreground and I used a warmer background tone to the cooler foreground to create a visual tension between those two elements. This painting was on the verge of ruin multiple times and was brought back from disaster as I explored various techniques during the process of creating it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! This acrylic on 24” round board is entitled “Ma Cherie Blossom”. The title comes from the French expression for “my dear”, as I speak to her in French every day and “cherry blossom”, which is the English name for the flowers that frame the image and in Japanese is Sakura, Alessandra’s middle name. Again, I’m exploring my two favorite themes: portrait and flowers. I really challenged myself with the hair and the bear. I painted the flowers in a semi-abstract style to contrast with the realism of the central area, and again I love metallic colors, so the painting is framed in gold. The green is about 60% permanent light green and 40% light phthalo turquoise. Love that combination. The dress took 6 different reds and oranges to compose to create the final depth. This will be my last circular portrait for awhile. Hope you enjoy!

Merry Christmas everyone! Just finished this acrylic painting on 30” round board entitled “Stargazer”. The title comes from the name of the flower Elsinore Ellie Lam is holding (also featured in the background) and also the fact that Ellie majored in astrophysics not to mention the positive connotations of a bright future. The original idea was inspired by Kris Knight’s portraits. As you know, I love flowers, which is a prominent theme in this painting from the flowers on the dress, to the flower Ellie is holding, to the background wallpaper pattern. The background is also reflective of the textiles that I love in Raoul Dufy’s work from an exhibit I saw in Japan last year and that inspired a series of paintings I did in 2019. The gold halo is a reference to Renaissance Christian iconography, a theme that I explored in a prior color-pencil drawing entitled Halo. It took me a while to settle on an appropriate …background. The background looked too plain without any flowers but I was too worried of it being too busy with flowers, so I settled on a stripe of flowers that almost conveys a sense of motion and keeps the tension between busy and simple intact. I also used a tone-on-tone color scheme to make the background not stand too far forward of the foreground: bronze on gold and medium violet on blended light violet/white/light phthalo blue. Hope you enjoy!

This painting appropriately finished today on Thanksgiving is entitled “Kaleidoscopic Cornucopia”. It is an acrylic on 36”-diameter round board. Initially, I waited two months for these little round wood pieces from Europe to be glued on the board, but they never arrived. Thank God because I love this project far more. As you know, I have drifted away from abstraction to more representational work. I’m exploring my favorite themes: flowers, birds, and nature. The flowers and birds are not 100% reflective of reality. I took some liberty with the color and style to make them more artistically interesting. I call this style impressionistic realism. The flowers on the top half are en face and on the bottom half reach up to the sun. The birds occupy the upper half of the frame, and the lower half progresses from small flying things to creepy crawlers. I also incorporated abstracted elements like the background and the leaves, the latter of which are reminiscent of Matisse’s paper cutouts, a theme that I have explored before. This will go in my office. Hope you like it, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Finished my 9 x 9 foot acrylic mural entitled “Roses Aren’t Red”. Thanks to Richard Crawford for building the massive scaffolding spanning two floors, and thank you Juan Garza for getting me supplies, a fan, ice water, and helping me cleaning up. This painting is inspired by Cy Twombly’s Roses series. Ellie wanted something totally abstract but my love now for figurative work prevented me from a fully abstracted piece. As you know, I love flowers, and on the bottom of the stairwell will be my other painting on flowers, the stained painting I did last year. Coming up the stairs you won’t see this painting, so the stairwell looks clean but when you round the corner it’s there. Also it will be the only painting you can see from the second floor.

Finished this 3.5 x 15 foot acrylic triptych painting entitled “Grand Canyon” that will extend across one wall of my bedroom. It was inspired by David Hockney’s Grand Canyon, and this like his is an invented landscape. I tried to make each panel appear unique and different but thematically and by color be unified as a whole piece. I used a limited color palette of like 10 colors for the entire painting to keep it unified but clearly the style and the colors are highly abstracted and meant for visual interest rather than for representational value.

This work entitled “Big Rock Candy Mountain” is on two canvases of 5 x 5 feet making it 5 x 10 feet in total. This painting has morphed so many times and has finally landed as a bright and massive painting for Alessandra’s future nursery. The title is from the folksy joke song that Ellie loves to sing and reminds her of where she was born in northern Georgia/Tennessee. Of course, also these bright and stylized mountains look like big candies and hopefully will make her room tasty and joyous! I used almost half of my 16 oz. jar of titanium white to make the colors more pastel and muted, especially in the background where it is more distant and misty. Hope you enjoy this playful painting! It will be my last one during this Covid time before returning to work.

This work is entitled “The Long Journey” and is an acrylic painting on a 4 x 3 foot canvas. Ellie is shown after a long day of travel returning back to the hotel with a view of Mount Fuji. This is an imagined scene since I don’t recall ever staying in a hotel facing Mt. Fuji. It continues my themes of travel, Japan, and a split frame divided 50/50 like the last one of Ellie in a pool in Santorini facing the ocean. I love the colors of Mt. Fuji. I could look at that part of the painting for hours! The partially truncated head has multiple intentions. First, it shocks the viewer and frames the painting in a very unique way. Second, I was really inspired by an interview with the artist Cecily Brown who said that the face defines the narrative of the painting and overly dominates the painting (which is absolutely true), so by partially obscuring it the painting removes that element. Third, it’s a figurative statement that the mind is wiped out after a long day of travel. The open guide book set on the lap further symbolizes mental fatigue. The items in the room symbolize femininity like the purse, peaches, and shoes not to mention the swooning appearance. This is contrasted against …the masculine presence of the mountain, which also has a feminine loveliness to it as well. There is a lightness to the upper half of the frame and heaviness to the lower half that provides another interesting contrast. The peaches also symbolize Japanese-ness, longevity, and truth. This painting will go in the hallway upstairs. My next painting will be massive and insane! Stay tuned.

This painting is entitled “Solitude in Santorini” and is an acrylic painting on 4 x 4 foot canvas. The idea came from Ellie wanting more abstract pieces for the home and my inability to escape figurative paintings. I thought that making 90% of the canvas filled with simple blues would appeal to her and fortunately she agreed to it. This painting is a sequel to my pastel “Sunrise in Santorini” and both feature Ellie in the pool at our hotel Astra Suites located in Imerovigli in Santorini looking right over the center of the crater facing the volcanic cliffs, the three peaks which you can see in the misty background. I used ultramarine blue, light ultramarine blue, and white for the sky, deep cerulean blue and white for the sea and the volcanoes, light phthalo green, light phthalo blue, white, and brilliant blue for the pool. The wall is a mixture of primary cyan, anthroquinine blue, and white. The shadow in the pool is composed of light phthalo blue and green, brilliant blue, white, and dioxazine purple. I transitioned from dark to light then light to dark from top to bottom and from blue to green and green to blue in the colors.

This painting is entitled “Birds of Paradise” and is an acrylic painting on 6 x 6 foot canvas. This is the largest canvas that I’ve done these past few months, and it is so large that I couldn’t bring it upstairs to my art room and mount it on my easel, so I had to paint parts of it lying on my side on the floor. The painting combines an impressionist-style landscape with a realistic foreground consisting of birds, window, table, and vase. The title of the painting refers to the name of the flowers and the birds, of course. The vase also has a bird and flowers on it. The surreal painting will be the centerpiece of my dining room.

This painting is entitled “The Dance”. It is an acrylic on an 8 x 3 foot canvas. It is the tallest painting that I’ve ever done and it has taken me the longest time, a little over a week, that I have worked on a single painting. It is so tall that I had to use a ladder to paint the upper half of the painting. The title and concept are based on Matisse’s “The Dance”, which is featured on the right side. The vase of flowers and the angle of the painting are taken from one version that Matisse did with a vase of flowers with his painting of the Dance as an element within his painting, so my painting is a painting of painting within a painting. This painting will be at the end of a long hallway leading to my bedroom. I chose the jumping dancer as the focal point to fill this vertical frame. If you see, the perspective of the painting is also from an elevated vantage looking down as if you the viewer are also dancing in mid-air. I painted my wife’s face onto the pose of a dancer (attached). I wanted the stillness and solemnity of my dog Kumo to anchor the bottom half of the painting.

This painting is entitled “Shine On” and it is an acrylic on 5 x 5 feet canvas, my largest portrait I’ve ever done. The title has three meanings: the expression means to carry on and it refers to our ability during the Covid crisis to Shine On; it refers to one of Ellie’s (and my) favorite artists, Pink Floyd; and it refers to the sheer brilliance of colors including the use of bronze, copper, silver, and gold, along with violet and orange interference paints (the latter of which you can’t even see in this photo). This painting will be over my fireplace and you first approach it from 90 degrees down a long hallway. There is direct sunlight on it, and all you will see at first are these brilliant sparkles from an angle!

This painting is entitled “Double Portrait” and features my mom and dad. It is an acrylic painting on 6 x 4 feet canvas. It is my most ambitious painting to date and represents my first attempt at an acrylic portrait, very difficult considering the incredibly fast dry time but I liked the challenge. The painting is inspired by David Hockney’s 1971 painting of Sir David Webster which was of a similar size, color palette, and medium (see attached). In fact, I copied his table as an homage to the artist and his work. As you can see on the table there are three books. All books may or may not exist in reality but they do in my imagination. The first book is on Hockney’s double portraits, of which he is famous and which is why I entitled this painting double portrait. The cover features his famous Portrait of an Artist that sold for $90 million making him the most expensive living artist until he was eclipsed by Jeff Koons at $91 million. The painting on the cover of the book features a swimming pool and with my Santorini painting that …had a swimming pool in it I was inspired to explore Hockney more in depth, which inspired this painting. The second book on the table entitled Museums of Naoshima references museums that I really want to see on a small island in southern Japan near my mother-in-law Masako’s home island of Shikoku and the book is an allusion to her. The bottom book on the Chèvre D’Or hotel in Eze is a stand in for my wife Ellie and also a reference to my previous painting on the same subject. The cross in the center of the painting represents the centrality of Christ in my life. The Sakura (cherry blossom) flowers represent my daughter (her middle name), and the same flower is in my dad’s handkerchief. The flowers are situated in a Ming vase, which represents my Chinese heritage. It also features two birds that my wife wanted me to paint, which represents us. The style of the painting is a mixture of realism and expressionism, the latter of which is especially expressed in the skin tones and facial features. Hope you enjoy!

This is the largest painting I’ve done 4’ x 16’ entitled “Spring Returns”, and it is an acrylic painting on clear acrylic panels. The title alludes to the Spring time we are currently in, our Spring that will return when this Covid crisis is over, and of course the flowers in the painting. It will be mounted floating in front of a limestone facade at the main entry of our wellness building when you walk in. As everyone knows, I love flowers and they cheer me up! Hope it cheers you up! I can’t show the painting as one piece because the painting is too long horizontally.

Just finished this 5’x9’ oil & acrylic on canvas entitled “Giverny”, my first oil painting and largest canvas I’ve done. It is obviously inspired by my visit to Monet’s lovely garden a few months ago in August followed a week later by my visit to the Kimball to see Monet’s later years, a truly awe-inspiring exhibit. This is the farthest I’ve delved into representational art but I can’t escape some of my roots in abstraction, which is mainly exemplified here through the color scheme. The background, Japanese bridge, and water flowers were done in acrylic followed by the water lillies and trees in oil. I have included some details of the painting since it is near impossible to appreciate it on a mobile device.

This painting entitled “Les Fauves” (6’ x 4’ Acrylic on Unprimed Canvas) was inspired by an exhibit that I saw in Tokyo of Raoul Dufy’s work on his textile designs. As you probably know, Dufy was known for his participation in the Fauvism movement (one of my favorites), which was known for its bright colors and abstracted style. Also I’ve been inspired by one of my favorite artists Morris Louis who was renowned for his “stained” paintings in the 1950s. This follows that style. I used airbrush and solid acrylics thinned and extended with GAC airbrush extender that allows it to soak into the unprimed canvas. I used different gradations of the paint to simulate a watercolor or stained look. I took a lot of closeup photos in different angles so that you can appreciate the watercolor effect-like tonality that adds depth and intrigue to the painting. This technique is difficult because any mistake cannot be corrected: one drip, one drop, or one stroke out of place is unfixable. This will ultimately be protected with a clear acrylic box and all paintings will be featured in my new office expansion. I’ll be starting on my largest canvas ever and will be my first attempt at oil painting. Good bye acrylics for now!

My “Four Earths” tetraptych will start as you walk down the hall on the right side of the wall with the bottom right (mountain) then progress to bottom left (shoreline) then you turn the corner and see top right (desert) and finally top left (jungle). This will join the old and the new wings of my wellness building.