Tai Lipan
Dividers of Daybreak
June - July 2019
In my recent hand-cut and layered wood paintings, light is used as a metaphor for vulnerability, inevitability, commemoration, and celebration.
Many of the paintings symbolically depict the dramatic collisions of weather, light and the landscape. Beams of light illuminate vulnerable trees and fields, while impregnated clouds loom closely, threatening or spilling over in tear-like drops.
In other works, light rains down in celebration as manmade explosions illuminate the night sky. The fireworks commemorate freedom while triggering smoke reminiscent of war and loss.
The painterly play between the drawing lines of the horizon and the compression of the symbolic elements, in all of the work, is strengthened through the relief process. Color, light and form dance between illusionistic and literal layers enhancing the dynamic. —Tai Lipan
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