Artist Statement: Dialogue with Nature

Mountains and water have become a metaphor for a mixture of my childhood memories and a man’s nostalgia. For me, painting mountains and water everyday is like a dialogue with my inner feelings through nature.

My landscape painting meditates on my relationship with my surroundings, articulating a perspective of inner peace, serenity and sometimes solitude.

A monologue becomes a dialogue with nature, not only helping me to express something deep at the bottom of my heart — something which I don’t usually want to verbalize, but also opening a gate for my inner feelings to be comforted. My landscape painting has been simplified to basic forms and shapes for compositional and structural purposes and meditates on my relationship with my surroundings, articulating a perspective of inner peace, serenity and sometimes solitude.

During the long process of searching for the mysterious interrelationship between my inner feelings and the formal elements of modern art, such as colour, form, space, and light, my art is gradually created with mood, hope, and poetry. Through studying the relationship between the metaphor that I discovered from within my subconscious and art’s formal elements, I wish to create my own art.

— 羅世長, Shyh-Charng Lo

羅世長藝術理念

全力專職藝術創作不覺已過了24年。猛回首，發現窗外的山水依然是我這些年來藝術生涯的靈感泉源與創作主題。每天試圖努力回歸到藝術發生的原點，去凝視自然，傾聽自己，以日常生活環境所見，所思，所感出發。用簡單的造型與構圖，透過藝術的手法給予每一張畫最大的深意。日復一日，一生磨一劍，有如禪修。這種傻勁，這種探索的行為與精神，不覺使我想起當代藝術中的行為藝術與觀念藝術。

藉著探索內在情感與形，色，光等現代藝術基本元素之間的奧秘關係，我那帶有情境，希望，詩意的藝術得以逐漸呈現出來。也在這一系列的研究過程中建立起自己的藝術風格。山水因為隔著距離的遠望與凝視，以及經過長時間的對話與自省，沉澱與冥思，一個東方人的文化鄉愁也就毫不自覺地流露在靜謚幽微的精神隱喻裡。

畢竟，繪畫只是藝術家氣質的呈現而已。

2013 於溫哥華