Artist: ob

Mirror less than a shudder... both
pauses and caresses, the passage of a liquid
bow on a concert of moss.
- Paul Claudel, The Black Bird in the Rising Sun

ob’s world is one where tranquility pervades. Gentle hues, misty scenes, and wide-eyed, reticent girls create a sanctuary where one’s defenses quietly dissolve. Softened contours rendered in oil pastels form a blue haze, imbued with the spirit of gathered moisture. This atmosphere stirs emotions, allowing them to accumulate, ferment, and flow within. Everything in the painting morphs gradually, sometimes fading into nothingness, at other times reemerging with vivid clarity. Dreamlike yet grounded in tangible objects, these scenes navigate the delicate boundary between reality and dreamscape.

Water transcends being merely a subject in ob’s paintings; it becomes a medium. Be it a pond where water lilies bloom, a distant coastline glimpsed during a picnic, a lake traversed by boat, or a bathtub filled with water, water carries the artist’s intrinsic imaginings of matter. Delving into the essence of water, she consistently expands and draws on its fluidity, uncertainty, boundaries, and transparency. This reshapes reality with subjective distortions, all fluidly converged through water. Here, water acts as a catalyst, opening the passageway to another world.

In this world, mermaids fondle flowers by the water’s edge; little girls sprout white wings, merging with the swans in the pond; a girl peers through a hole above the water, her long braids playfully entwining with the underwater creatures’ frolics. Meanwhile, we can still recognize familiar scenes within the paintings: the harbor views of Hong Kong, the everyday window-side vistas, and the solitary figure gazing out of an airplane window, all inevitably pulling us back to reality. ob thus effectively sketches a world brimming with uncertainty.

On character depiction, she explains: “The structure of the human mind, the natural environment, and the physical systems of living organisms repeat life and death, so uncertain situations are inevitable. I treat my characters symbolically as a motif that contains the various possibilities before it settles on something, to think about how we can live in better circumstances for ourselves and others.” In her eyes, these figures extend beyond the representations of human girls, embodying instead the mythical and folkloric creatures. Just as she re-imagines the mermaid tales, she persistently breathes new life and meaning into these forms.

The world of uncertainty ob constructs, one could argue, inspires us to embrace our subjective perspectives and imaginations. As we strive to eliminate subjectivity from logic and science, emphasizing the importance of objectivity in maintaining the world’s order, we often find the world chaotic and fragmented. Deprived of subjectivity, all things around us become static and lifeless, matters irrelevant to our existence. We struggle to reconcile with the world and find harmony with others. However, in ob’s paintings, these elements—past, present, and future; opposing and contradictory—seem to harmonize under the unifying influence of water, offering an oddly beautiful vision. Her works continually spark and awaken the viewers’ imagination, encouraging them to identify beloved imageries from their own surroundings. These emotionally rich forms facilitate a profound transformation of one’s spiritual energy.

Beyond the events she has experienced and the views visible to her eyes, there exists an indescribable, elusive in-betweenness (Awayi) equally essential to her imagined world. “I constantly feel that it is difficult to make definitive statements about something in today’s world,” she continues, “This is because I believe that there are few things that can be divided into black and white. The human psyche is a complex mixture of opposing elements, such as life and death, male and female, children and adults, and it is as though these conflicting elements are swirling within us like a vortex. When you try to make something complex easy to understand, sometimes it appears to be missing more elements than it really is. I believe that the ‘in-between’ can stimulate the imagination of each individual and deepen their understanding towards others.” Clearly, the “in-between” she refers to includes temporal, spatial, and interpersonal gaps and absences. They are invisible, often circumscribed by individual perception. Yet it is precisely this awareness of the unseen that opens up the dimension for imagination, ultimately leading to a space of creativity.

As the Italian writer Gabriele d’Annunzio once wrote, “The richest experiences happen long before the soul takes notice. And when we begin to open our eyes to the visible, we have already been supporters of the invisible for a long time.” [1] In other words, these invisible elements are the key to unlocking the essence of our inner selves. ob’s work captures and transforms these hidden facets, using imagination to turn this key and conjure new visions. Though these visions may be confined to the canvas, they brim with such beauty and enchantment that they stir and rekindle our yearning for imagination.

Through her art, ob confronts the uncertainty of the world, blending the visible with the invisible in a landscape of imagination. She reveals to us that only dreams remain constant. Her creations enable us to transcend the concrete, to follow our deepest visions and feelings without restraint. These imageries, rich with genuine emotion, leave us with a sense of profound strength as we awaken from the dream.

Text by Sara Jing Yuan
Translated by Lingxuan Tang

[1] Gabriele d’Annunzio, Contemplatione della morte. 2nd ed., Milan, 1912, pp. 17-18.