Leang Touch
A Moment in Time
I like figure drawing and I like genre painting, so that is my area of focus. With pencil, paper, and enough skill, one can make a whole new world. Just imagine, with enough skill and knowledge, I can make a whole new civilization, custom, and culture. The only thing that is stopping me from this pursuit is technical skill, mainly drawing. The quest to improve will be a lifelong pursuit.
Artist/Thesis Statement
I like to make pictures of simple everyday life. The mundane things we do in our everyday life, the stuff we just go through the motions without giving much thought to, I find beautiful. For example, talking on the phone, reading a letter, and someone staring off into space is a picture worthy idea I like to capture in my work.
After picture making, my areas of interest are ancient and pre-modern history, mainly Chinese and Japanese history. Because I am inspired by the past, I look to it for visions of the future. Works of the past look far more interesting to me than most contemporary artworks.
My influences are a mix of eastern and western artists. My artists' heroes from the east include Japanese woodblock printers and Nihonga painters such as Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Uemura Shoen. My heroes from the west include Michelangelo and Peter Paul Rubens.
My medium varies. The tools I like to use include watercolor, ink, gouache, and digital media such as Photoshop and Procreate. Depending on the stages of the drawing, I will use different tools. Working from general to specific is my usual process. In the beginning, I prefer to be loose, so watercolor, ink, and gouache work well for the compositional stage. As I start to refine the picture, I tend to use more digital tools.
Subject matters that I like to depict include human gesture and scenes of everyday life. Most pictures that I admire have a figure doing something, so a human figure is a main theme in my work. However, subject matter aside, I am also thinking about the abstract because no matter how realistic a picture is, it is nothing more than a symbol. It is interesting how lines and shapes, when placed in the correct relationship to each other, can represent reality. To me, that is the craft of picture making. I find satisfaction in being able to create an illusion of reality on a 2-D surface.
