Here is your chance to experience the art of traditional lacquer painting found in Vietnam.
Artist Megan Arundel has her show at the Nanaimo Art Gallery on Commercial Street until August 24, 2010. Arundel explains how the exhibition came to be: “Last summer, I returned from a year in Vietnam 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.
Vietnam 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. 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.”
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