Drifting between Reality and Illusion: The Statement of Tseng Jen-Fu’s My Mother Ink Paintings Series

• Main Author: 曾仁甫
• Other Authors: 莊連東
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65029649275789977188

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 美術學系在職進修碩士班 === 100 === My mother suffers from disease for a long time. A stroke deprived her of normal perceptions, creating illusion in the world she sees, hears, and thinks about. On the one hand, her condition causes some disturbances to our lives. On the other hand, I am inspired to artistic creation by her condition. My mother used to be a familiar figure for me. Disease, however, makes her different and gives me a unfamiliar mother figure. She exists and struggles in a world I could not understand. Sometimes she asks for help, yet I am helpless in dealing with her illusory world and everything feels unreal to me. In other times, however, we are living together, having normal daily interactions; everything feels real then. This situation forms the basis of this ink painting series. I want to portray aspects of my mother as a means of expressing my ideas of human perception and existence. The theoretical ground of my works comes from the Chinese and Western philosophies, especially those about the essence of existence and the duality of things. I find inspiration from Expressionist’s Croce and Collingwood and refer to their discussions about intuition, expression, imagination, and sentiments of artistic creation. In terms of duality of things, I will adopt Lao Tzu’s discussion of “being and non-being” as well as the Existentialist view of Lévinas about the external authenticity and internal hypocrisy. For my creative works, I adopt the techniques of “ink diffusion” with splash ink, splash color, and ink drawing. By “ink diffusion,” I mean the technique of painting on two pieces of rice paper stacked together. The paper on the upper layer will capture the complete image, while the image on the lower layer will be presented in diffused and blurred ink. Then I will describe the selection of creative forms, the design of composition, and the twists in the actual creative process. I will also describe my feelings and thoughts about individual works and analyze their arrangement of image, the management of locations, the use of techniques, and the images I attempt to portray.