Canadian Tire Money Art

What better way to use our iconic Canadian Tire money into art: a pop-up bird card for your wallet!

paper architecture

When I was in Art College, one of my majors was print making. I study etching, lithography and silkscreen. Every terms I have a produce an edition print of no less than 25 prints and every prints has to be exactly the same from number one to number 25. I sent hours working on my prints in the print studio. On my graduate year, my hard work paid off, I was awarded the most outstanding print maker that year. However, as soon as left college my print making career was ended as well
I was busy to earn a living and to pay back my student loan and making print was the last thing I was thinking about. There was not much outlet to sell my prints or jobs for a printer maker. The closest job for a print maker was silk screen t-shirt printer. I kept most of those prints in my parent’s basement. All together I think I must have at least a couple hundred prints.
Later, I moved out from home into my own apartment. I was too poor to purchase some blinds for my windows; I made my prints into window blinds. Even that were years ago but some friends would tell me they still remember those beautiful hand- printed window blinds I had.
All of sudden last night, an idea came to me; I started to cut up some of my prints and gave them a new life. I had turned them into paper architecture cards.

One in a Billion

After my trip to Beijing China last year, I got many inspirations and new ideas for my painting:
China is a huge country both in term of size and population. Before I travel to Beijing, I have no concept of over a billion population was like and Beijing has almost 25 million compare to the 33 million of the country of Canada where I live. When I was there when during the October national holiday when close to a million Chinese different parts of China travel to Beijing, the capital city. I saw many faces among the thousands even talked a few at all the tourist spots. Once I took a look of them, then they move along replaced with another. I likely will never see them again in my life time. I have no idea of who they are what they do for a living but they all seem happy and enjoying themselves. They are just one in a billion which gave me the idea to work on this new series of portraits “one in a billion”
I work on them in between my regular paintings, mostly done in an hour or less with little drawing but direct brushwork. I had been doing one per day, they are very enjoyable to do and as soon as I post them on my flickr page I would get comments on them almost right away.
This one I called it the little emperor because of china’s one child policy, parents are so devoted to please their child some are very spoil. They are the modern day emperors of China. This child was wearing an imperial hat, one time the color of yellow was the emperor’s color and only the emperor allowed to wear. In Forbidden City, they have those hats for sale and parents would buy them for their child to wear.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alfredng/sets/72157629102218995/

The year of the dragon

I had been hard at work for this painting to celebration the Chinese New Year, the year of the dragon. Though often called Chinese New Year it also called the lunar New Year is celebrated by many Asian countries; it falls on a different day every year. This year the New Year is falls on the 23rd of January. This painting is combined with watercolor painting and paper cut out. The dragon on the background is cut out right on to the painting.
The dragon is the most powerful and suspicious Chinese zodiac sign, sign of authority and ambition, symbol of good fortune and sign of intense power. The Dragon is said to be a deliverer of good fortune and a master of authority. In Chinese cultures peony is symbolizes wealth. In Chinese the word vase (ping) sounds similar to peace. The gold fish on the vase symbolizes wealth and good fortune and because the word fish (yu) in Chinese sounds like abundance.
All together, this painting means wishing you abundance of wealth, health, plenty of power, peace and full of energy for the year of the dragon.
Happy New Year and may prosperity be with you all!

Watercolor and cutout 28”x20”, 2012