Crafted Interiors

The Red River has been a familiar presence to me since childhood.
From the moment I first began to form memories, I was already living near the river.
One of the very first sorrows I ever felt was when I accompanied my mother to the riverbank to see my father off — he was leaving for Laos for work.
We only saw him off at the ferry dock. After crossing to the other side, he would catch a long-distance coach over the Trường Sơn Mountains into Laos.
To my three-year-old mind, the Red River felt like a river of parting — and the far shore, a strange foreign land that had taken my father away for months.
One of my greatest childhood joys, too, was waiting at that ferry dock to welcome him home.
He would bring back all sorts of delicious treats — once even a child-sized bicycle with bright pink plastic spokes, bold and striking.
No one else in the village had a bike like that. It was my pride and joy throughout my early years.

That’s why, when I try to paint imagined landscapes — places I’ve seen many times in dreams, like some sacred temple in my mind — I often paint the river, or a ferry landing.
There’s something hopeful in those images, but also something tinged with longing.
When I received the prompt for the Fairy–Dragon exhibition, I immediately thought of recreating the Red River’s landscape in the form of a votive painting.

My two most recent oil paintings also depict a ferry landing — or the Red River shimmering faintly in the background.

• Size  - 100x100 (cm)
• Material  - Powder color, gold leaf on do papper mounted on canvas
• Diptych
• Year of creation - 2022