Abstract Domain Of Tran Hong Duc

The world of art and painting is as vast as the universe. There, each artist and each work are vast, small universes. To meet, understand, or own an art piece requires great fate. That’s just considering tangible things, so what about Abstract Art? Can we hold the dream?

The Abstract art school was born in America and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, along with the development of many other schools such as (Impressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and Expressionism). Escaping the constraints of form, abstract art achieves freedom of expressing ideas and liberates the artist’s thoughts.

Artist Hong Duc’s full name is Tran Hong Duc, born in 1961, in the year of the Rat. An old book wrote, “Men of this age have many difficulties and challenges in life, but in return, their career has many prospects and bright prospects. Then relax and be happy.” Artist Hong Duc, whom I met on the first day of spring, perhaps fits this prophecy. To be able to be kind and happy today, I see that he has gone through many difficulties and events in life, the kind of events and difficulties that one day we can look back and smile. He himself admitted, “It’s true that sometimes it’s not easy to overcome, but that’s okay, life is just that, I’m happy.”

At the age of 61, artist Hong Duc has been involved with abstract art for more than 25 years now. 25 years of continuous drawing, associated with vague abstraction, something that even “people in the profession” sometimes misjudge. He said, “Abstract painting is for me. If I think or analyze too much, how can drawing be interesting? Drawing is a need like eating, drinking, and breathing every day. On days when I can’t hold a brush, I feel very uncomfortable. !”

“So, do the motifs in your paintings come from anything specific before you painted them? Suppose the forest, the field, the flower garden, the universe, or the sea?” I ask. “It could be everything, or it could be nothing specific because when you hold a brush, everything flows together on the canvas; your job is to draw naturally.” But you know, the art of painting is not inherently easy. For the tip of the brush to flow, the image to appear, and the painting to be good and beautiful, the mind/body must be unified, and the drawing technique must be trained arduously, and luckily, this can be achieved.

I find that the most precious thing in every artist’s artistic life is spontaneity and that spontaneity in painting will come after many times when the ego wants to give up and surrender. Fortunately, artist Hong Duc may have reached the vast abstract domain. Every definition, every law, every rule of right and wrong, a specific shape, or any joy, anger, love, or sadness of life are sublimated, dissolved, and unified in every streak of his color. That is the abstract domain in Hong Duc’s paintings; it is everything, but at the same time, it is nothing!

Artist Hong Duc’s abstract domain is, after all, his private world. Each work is created like small windows that help us “see” the artist’s mind. It is where the most simple thoughts and ideas are formed. So, to “see clearly” those simple to abstract things, we cannot use the reality before our eyes as a measure; what is needed is the guidance of the clear mind of artist Hong Duc.

And are we living in an abstract dimension?

That is completely possible because everyone, from Buddha to Albert Einstein, believed that everything in this world is relative. For example, what if one day, our eyes see 360 degrees like what a dragonfly sees? Curved is no longer curved, straight is no longer straight, circles, squares, triangles, colors, etc., everything will all have to be redefined. It’s really difficult if things change like that! But my friend, let your mind freely fly to see the wonderful world of colors and ideas coming from the interesting abstract works of artist Hong Duc, and who knows, you will discover many greatness.