An Vũ

Original article title: “Những bức tranh gửi lên trời gió lộng”
https://laodong.vn/lao-dong-cuoi-tuan/nhung-buc-tranh-gui-len-troi-gio-long-1434585.ldo

Six months after her graduation defense at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts, Hoang Hue Phuong became the first painter from the 2019–2024 class to hold a solo exhibition. With over 50 works, using various materials and sizes, Phuong paints her world, for herself, but also opens windows into her artistic journey ahead.

The paintings in the exhibition were created between 2019 and 2024, with more than half completed in 2024. Phuong employs a full range of materials: pencil, gouache, silk, oil paint, lacquer—but oil paintings dominate, aligning with her major. In her pencil and gouache works, she uses subdued, harmonious tones, while in oil paintings, she embraces vibrant colors with sharp contrasts. Emotions seem to swell like a sphere, expanding from a quiet melancholy into something intense and explosive. The artist shifts from a calm, objective observer to a subject immersed in sorrow, earnestly sending it off into the wind.

It’s no coincidence that Phuong titled her exhibition “Trời buồn gió cao” (“The Melancholy Sky and the High Winds”). The sadness has followed her through house moves, separations from loved ones, and the hurtful words of childhood classmates. Though she loved painting, Phuong first pursued law. She graduated and worked in the legal field before entering art school. Her journey feels like an adventure, full of unexpected turns.

Her process reflects this: she rarely sketches in detail before painting. Instead, she lets her feelings and thoughts guide her. Turning left or right, choosing a path, trying a method—painting, for her, is an act of exploring the painting itself. She is both explorer and creator of the landscapes she explores. Where she ends up might be the corpse of a bird on the shore, feathers still caught in the wind; it might be fragments of bone, or a forest, a dry plain, a flooded beach, a construction site, or an empty city—a place at once lonely yet hopeful, both achingly tender and yearning to leave.

Viewers may ask: is this loneliness worth it? Surely the artist does not intend to burden anyone with sadness. Nor is this solitude a metaphor for something grand or sublime. But when one gathers all these threads of solitude, a current of honesty begins to emerge.

She paints bones because she fears them. She paints dreams because her dreams have often brought panic. She paints wings because a beloved bird flew away and never returned… These fears and losses, though deeply personal, are still worthy of being painted—why not use them to speak of what matters? Facing, unraveling, connecting emotions and thoughts—why distract from that focus?

People talk of purity, often demanding that pure painting must preserve the unique language of visual art—unlike theater or literature—evoking feeling directly, selectively, without long explanations or narrative, with eyes gleaming as though carrying a mission. But isn’t that demand too harsh, too filled with expectation, for an artist just beginning her career?

Too much expectation and burden can numb emotion, create fear, hesitation, and ultimately stop action. Thinking takes time; painting happens fast. But without actually painting, “a painting will never be finished.” And so, the gap between the desire to create and the actual work only widens.

Although her vision for a solo exhibition might differ from how it turned out, Phuong’s boldness in this debut show is a valuable experience for any artist stepping into the professional art world. Each of her reflections, shared alongside the paintings—though some colleagues may find them unnecessary—remind us that for Phuong, painting is joy, and words, too, are a visual language.

Others may have stories of “crying because of painting,” but Phuong simply “paints because of crying.” Yet her background in law has given her the mental discipline often lacking in art students. She can endure even what she dislikes. Painting brings joy, but artists don’t always enjoy painting—especially when many works turn out badly and must be discarded. Phuong says she keeps painting anyway, “gritting my teeth, pushing through fatigue,” and has “traveled many roads” to gain a deep sensitivity toward her art.

Among those many paths, perhaps the most meaningful one led Phuong to reconnect with what once seemed lost or broken—with someone, or something. Art has the power to bridge separations, distances, and sorrows. Through painting, she can send her sadness into the windy sky—enough so that, even if one cannot deeply empathize with another’s sorrow, one might still find that “sorrow is beautiful.”

That beauty is like wings flying above treetops, where “each trembling leaf is made of tears,” as Phuong once wrote.