Journey: Recent Paintings By Linda Fong
June 5 - October 14, 2001

Honolulu artist Linda Fong’s new series of paintings had its beginnings in an earlier series of large paintings which the artist left unfinished. Fong cut up color snapshots of the abandoned works into small rectangles and used these fragments as inspirations for new compositions. She was interested in how the cropped forms in the fragments suggested landscapes. Fong’s new paintings, painted in acrylics on cotton muslin mounted on wood panels, are all identical in size and horizontal in format (chosen, Fong says, because it is a classic landscape shape). Displayed around a gallery the works appear like still images from a film, taking the viewer on a tour through a range of spaces and terrains – hence the exhibition title, "Journey".


Fong refers to her works as abstract landscapes, "not based on any actual places, more places in my mind." Fong’s shapes and colors evoke sky, hills, valleys, water, vegetation, helping viewers orient themselves in the composition. Yet at the same time, Fong makes use of multiple perspectives and interplay of foreground and background to create a spatial ambiguity. "The feeling I want to convey to the viewer," she says "is one of not knowing exactly where you are." With their contrast of bright and dark colors, light that seems to emanate from within, and sinuous, swirling lines floating through the compositions activating space and making tangible a sense of atmosphere, Fong’s paintings are, as she has described them, "ethereal places of mystery."