Lessons From Viet Nam
the art of traditional lacquer painting
Megan Arundel
August 10 - 24, 2010
Downtown Gallery, 150 Commercial St.
The Nanaimo Art Gallery will feature a unique exhibition of traditional lacquer painting by artist Megan Arundel. Arundel explains how the exhibition came to be: "Last summer, I returned from a year in Viet Nam with memories of a warm and friendly people and with sketchbooks full of scenes from that incredible country. I also came back with several lacquer paintings completed under the tutorship of Le Xuan Chieu, a professor at the Fine Arts University in Ho Chi Minh City and a master painter of traditional Vietnamese lacquer painting. I had been curious about this ancient art and was ecstatic to find Chieu, who agreed to give me individual lessons.
Viet Nam has transformed Asian tradition of using natural lacquer to protect and decorate furnishings and utensils into a painting technique. It developed to include the use of other substances to embellish the paintings, such as crushed eggshells, mother-of-pearl, gold, and silver. It is a fascinating, labour-intensive process, each painting taking 3 to 4 months to complete. Briefly (although there is nothing “brief” about it), a painting is built layer upon layer with lacquer, a natural tree sap, and finished by sanding and polishing it by hand to create a brilliant luster."
Arundel will discuss the exciting process of painting in lacquer in her artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, August 14th. Reception and artists talk will happen from 11:00am to 1:00pm.
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