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Mignonette Yin Cheng
1933-2009
I can remember, as a child, lining up
on a beach in Southern China with my brothers and sisters, our backs to
the water. My father then asked us to look at the sunset, upside down, between
our legs. This “new
vision” of
the world has stayed with me. It is a feeling that I try to capture in
each of my paintings, a sense of looking at a familiar scene with new eyes.
In the words of Paul Cezanne: “painting. . .means perceiving harmony
between numerous relationships and transposing them according to a new,
original logic.”
Open-air painting has a certain aura of romance associated with it, but
it is also a practice that poses several -often unforeseen - challenges.
The serenity of these sketches does not reveal the sometimes trying circumstances
under which they were created: extremes of weather and eccentric behavior
of the locals, the constant bombardment of locals crowding over me as
I paint, to name a few. Nor does it speak of the sinking feeling one
experiences after hiking uphill for two hours to find you have forgotten
your paints, or the ironic exhilaration of watercolour painting in the
rain. Nevertheless, I have come to know not only the complexities of
the public transportation system, but how to assemble an equipment survival
kit: a Cotman’s watercolour field box, a large 20” x
30” pad of watercolour paper, brushes, a palette, a bamboo folding
stool, water, sunscreen, insect repellent, a hat and a scarf.
I consider these paintings studies from nature - efforts to grasp a fleeting
moment of light, colour and shade. I work not from imagination but from observation,
trying to interpret personally natural pictorial space and the relationship
of its elements. Watercolour is an ideal medium for the spontaneous recording
of transient atmospheric effects. The speed with which it can be applied
and its inherent luminosity make watercolour the most practical medium for
open-air
painting.
What draws me to a subject? It should be anything as compositions offer themselves
instantly, The effort to capture the essence of the subject in one, twenty-minute
gesture - the play of shadow and light, the contrast of colour, the variation
of forms and repetition, the structural elements - allows little time to
think and plan out composition. Far from a leisurely artistic exercise, open-air
painting can be an exhilarating dynamic process, one that demands all my
skills as a painter.
On location, there is often little time to spend on preliminary drawing before
the paint is applied. I begin a study directly with the brush; drawing, in
effect, with colour. Paul Cezanne quantified the interrelationship between
the processes:
Drawing and colour are not separate and distinct, as everything in nature
has colour. While one paints, one draws; the more the colour harmonizes,
the more precise becomes the drawing. When the colour is rich, the form is
at its height. The contrasts and relations of tones comprise the secret of
drawing and form.
In my experiences, I have learned never to return to a watercolour after
its completion. In doing so, one often loses the lyrical marriage and delicate
balance/ interplay of the colour, water, and paper. In the watercolour painting
process, preserving the white of the paper is essential to establish the
passages of light within a composition. Knowing where to eliminate the whiter
and, equally important, when to stop, are all part of the conscious thought
as I build the composition with the intent of keeping the process pure and
unaltered.