Watched “I am Sam” on DVD when I was in Bangkok a couple of days ago for a weekend trip with some friends. It’s an old movie starring Sean Penn about a mentally retarded man fighting for custody of his 7-year old daughter played by Dakota Fanning. In case you wonder why I was watching DVD on a holiday trip, I was bloody ill for the entire trip and spent the first day doing nothing but lounge in the nice Ascott apartment.
Anyway, the movie was good as expected since it won some Oscar, probably for Sean Penn but what I remember from the movie was a scene of Dakota painting at her foster parent’s home. Looking at her paint, I feel an urge to go back and pick up my brushes again. She was just painting like in a totally random way or what the art world would call “abstract”. No drawings, patterns, anything to guide her. She was really “just dip brush in paint and put brush on paper” and then repeating it all over again.
I was never taught to paint like that. I spent many years as a kid learning painting/drawing under a professional art teacher (whom I realized later when I was an adult that he is actually the current Vice-Chairman of the Singapore Chinese Painting Association) who signed me up for all sorts of local art competitions. He always said that I was an impatient kid (he could tell when I was that young – I started learning from him when I was seven) and painting would make me less so. I wonder if it helped. But what I clearly remember were his instructions on how to paint. Painting to me is always deliberate, structured, orderly and purposeful. It’s about discipline. It’s also demanding. Demanding because I always need to be fully concentrated or I might make a “mistake”. So sometimes, painting can be stressful, although it’s still mostly enjoyment to me.
I want to try doing it again but this time without plan or purpose. At the end of it, I want to see what I would get and how I would feel. And I’ll blog about it. :)
Anyway, the movie was good as expected since it won some Oscar, probably for Sean Penn but what I remember from the movie was a scene of Dakota painting at her foster parent’s home. Looking at her paint, I feel an urge to go back and pick up my brushes again. She was just painting like in a totally random way or what the art world would call “abstract”. No drawings, patterns, anything to guide her. She was really “just dip brush in paint and put brush on paper” and then repeating it all over again.
I was never taught to paint like that. I spent many years as a kid learning painting/drawing under a professional art teacher (whom I realized later when I was an adult that he is actually the current Vice-Chairman of the Singapore Chinese Painting Association) who signed me up for all sorts of local art competitions. He always said that I was an impatient kid (he could tell when I was that young – I started learning from him when I was seven) and painting would make me less so. I wonder if it helped. But what I clearly remember were his instructions on how to paint. Painting to me is always deliberate, structured, orderly and purposeful. It’s about discipline. It’s also demanding. Demanding because I always need to be fully concentrated or I might make a “mistake”. So sometimes, painting can be stressful, although it’s still mostly enjoyment to me.
I want to try doing it again but this time without plan or purpose. At the end of it, I want to see what I would get and how I would feel. And I’ll blog about it. :)
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