“Spring, its softness is disarming and its light comforting” – A Painter’s Note In Spring and Selected Paintings

By Sophia Yee, painter and poet

Spring allows me to express myself fully and freely in a dynamic movement of colors,shapes, lines, light and shadows and to capture the essence of the moment and perhaps the light and shadow that raises me from a sinking mood and a dead spirit. Spring speaks in a unique language that I am eager to learn and digest, to succumb to what is necessary in order to have a meaningful dialogue within the framework of the existing time and space. It is my desire to recreate a time and space in the forms of my canvases; to rediscover and reconstruct a new and to retrieve a ground that I am intent to gain. It is also an opportunity to unveil the mystery and to submit to the self to minimize the feeling of longing, losing and belonging and to come to understand the pain, the joy and the dreary.

I paint, draw, write, repaint, attest, verify, convert, govern and learn more of what I did not know, see or may have missed. I try to design and measure what is the best tone to be fitted well on my canvas; harmony, transparency and the senses emerge together in ceased moments just like the spring shows its own strength and carries its own weight. Perhaps it is a crucial time to notice a message from within.

I paint when the time is entrusted and entranced enough; when the beauty of spring offers abundance. I wager my odds of luck and pledge an allegiance and have no more regret in the mist of the second chance. Time is here and time is given. Spring is dynamic, holy and vibrant; like a Beethoven’s symphony; inspiring, stimulating, and redeeming. Spring’s colors frank opinion, its smell intrigue and its shapes evoke. Spring, its softness is disarming and its light comforting.

I paint for releasing, departing and redefining from the past; for recreating a new arena, dissecting a temptation, deflating a fraud dream and to trust my hands again by putting the secrecy of fresh blue, green, red and yellow onto a newly stretched canvas which lays quietly in the corner of my studio as my heart beats fast like the pulse of the spring in the delight of the sunset as the birds’ wings awaken I fly too. This is the time I am alive, stronger and definitive and liberty and freedom follow, at these moments I can see straight into the center of the flowers that reveal truth, equality, peace, love and happiness.

I paint the landscapes; the flowers, water, sky, trees, birds and so on in a way that I find true love, knowledge, wisdom and peace. I am better prepared and find myself consolidated and attached and in the process of working through my painting all things can be decided, settled and reunited in the essence of a real time and in a real space. Choices are made in a bittersweet battle to understand and accept all the things that coexist.

I feel the responsibility to acknowledge that all things have light and shadow just as seasons return from departing and from an immeasurable distance comes a manageable path. My work takes me along traveling through the river, sky, hills, mountains, shores and seas. I give my total devotion, attention, energy, liberty and care. Light is in every corner of my painting and is essential to the survival of my painting that survives me and speaks expressively. In the end, the transformations and the messages in my work take me to a higher ground where I breathe deeply and freely one more time.

The six paintings (oil on canvas) below are from a large body of my work I did some years ago. All the paintings are titled “Spring #”, and the sizes are all in square 4 feet by 4 feet.

“Spring # 2”