Nguyen Quoc Thang's two returns

With 4 different themes: Landscape, Still Life, Festival, Empty Boat, the paintings have one thing in common: their bright colors and their liveliness. White, pink, yellow, blue... the fluffy color blocks, interwoven and connected by the artist's emotional flow, create a fresh vitality that attracts viewers.

There are two distinct returns when looking at the works: One is returning to the village, and the other is returning to the material of pigment. This return is also the path the artist has taken, and arrived to see himself.

1.

Born and raised in Hai Phong city, in a family that loves art, his father is painter Nguyen Quoc Thai (1943 - 2020), Nguyen Quoc Thang came to painting naturally. His father did not impose on him a framework, giving him complete freedom to see and draw whatever he liked. With a personality that "felt shy to communicate since childhood", painting is a suitable way for Nguyen Quoc Thang to express himself.

Although he was attached to Hai Phong, Thang finally chose Cu Da village (Hanoi) as his destination. This first return was due to fate, and the fate was his sympathy for the countryside scenery since his student days in the village. “The rustic, simple beauty with roads, alleys, 2-room, 3-wing houses, horizontal houses, vertical houses, peeling walls” in Van Dinh in the late 1990s completely captivated him with the colors of painting.

Nearly 20 years later, he came to Cu Da and Khuc Thuy - two villages in the suburbs of Hanoi that are beautiful and evoke his love for ancient villages. But Cu Da also has another beauty, which is that it has houses with ancient French architecture interwoven with traditional architecture, creating a unique, unmistakable blend.

Living in the village, “watching the village, absorbing the village”, so the village is the inspiration for many of Quoc Thang’s paintings - this is not difficult to understand. In Thang’s paintings, the village has a new shade, breaking away from the usual image of many people about the ancient village with its quiet, silent appearance for so long; here the village’s vitality during Tet and festivals fills the paintings. That is also his joyful feeling when “talking” about the village through painting.

This emotion attracts the artist to other lands: Lao Cai, Cao Bang, Ninh Thuan, Hai Phong..., the bright and brilliant color palette is always the mark the artist wants to leave. A landscape in a wide space or a still life in a narrow space, the artist still finds a close-up angle to directly express his emotions. The people in the village activities: Tet, Mid-Autumn Festival or in festivals are both witnesses and preservers of both tangible and intangible values. It is these owners who breathe life into the village, revive memories, nurture the spirit and culture of an entire community.

The artist has seen a smooth whole, where a house is not just a house, a communal house or pagoda is not just a communal house or pagoda, people do not appear alone... Everything goes together: the landscape with people, gods and Buddhas, ceremonies and festivals, the past and the present create the village customs and vitality of the village. It is not by chance that friends call Quoc Thang "Thang Lang", because the village quality is in both his personality and his paintings.

2.

If the first return was due to fate, the second return was due to the artist's nature. A person who was once "afraid to communicate" but "would not be constrained and would immediately protest if constrained" chose the material of pigment to express his strong thoughts and emotions about the village. Nguyen Quoc Thang used to paint with ink, oil, and acrylic, but he gradually realized all the advantages and disadvantages of each type of material, and finally, pigment was the most suitable material to express his nature on the painting.

Gouache allows him to capture emotions at a fast pace, with a soft surface, free lines, and yet the colors and correlations in the painting are still flexible. The material, which was originally used in sketches or created during difficult times for many artists, has now become a useful choice. The time spent working with gouache has made Thang understand and feel the material in its depth.

Two points that many people encounter when using gouache materials are that if not careful, the painting will easily fade and when the layers of color are stacked, they do not “match” each other. The reason for the fading is due to the habit of mixing the original color with white to create the tone, but the more white is mixed, the more faded it becomes. The reason for stacking layers of color but they do not “match” each other is because the painter is slow in processing, a gouache painting that has been painted for too long will cause the previous layer of color to dry out, so the next layer of color will not “stick” to the previous layer. The second point of encounter was shared by painter Do Phan with Nguyen Quoc Thang during the time he was preparing for the entrance exam to the University of Fine Arts. This mismatch is like “a finished painting with a streak of color from another place stuck on it”.

Fast drawing speed to handle the adhesion of pigment, according to artist Quoc Thang, within a little over 2 hours, should not draw for more than 3 - 4 hours. Instead of drawing with a small-tipped brush, the artist uses a 3 - 4 finger wide brush. This tool is also suitable for creating free-flowing color blocks, expressing fast, rushing emotions across the surface of the painting.

As a traditional graphic artist, Nguyen Quoc Thang retains the strong color palette of Vietnamese folk paintings such as Dong Ho and Hang Trong in his works. The colors of Tet and the vibrant festivals constantly move on the surface of the painting. However, they do not “float” in space, but are imprinted in space, due to the black color (more or less) that both serves as a background and creates rhythm. Black is the first color the artist uses when starting a painting.

Black is also the main color of the old newspaper that the artist painted on. The pigments painted on the old newspaper, which seem cheap and easy to throw away, become an interesting combination. The hidden letters, the still-shining letters, the light, spongy pieces of color, threading and clinging to each other, create a romantic and bustling aftertaste. With this combination, Nguyen Quoc Thang has beautified both the pigments and the old newspaper, beautified the village and life with all his enthusiasm and kindness.

Art is a reflection of the artist on all levels: philosophy of life, world, aesthetics, soul... that the viewer can feel when enjoying. Every good energy is a beautiful signal, leading the viewer and the author himself towards the horizon where the rainbow appears - even though there may have been a storm or hurricane that just passed.