This painting was created in 2024. The colors of this year are still bright but not dazzling. I have gradually found a balance point among the bright colors.
The boats sank to the bottom of the lake one after another, but they did not become history. It once carried the young person over one wave after another.
Inches: x in
Size without the frame: /
Country: China
Date: 2024
Materials: Acrylic paint on paper.
Condition: well preserved
Creative themes and style | My works revolve around the creative concept of "The land of humanity, People on the land".The people in the painting are people in nature, and the lines, shapes, and colors are close to nature. The nature in the painting is nature in the eyes of humans, existing in interaction with humans.I don’t pursue a series of works with a fixed and continuous style. I hope that the style of the pictures will synchronize with the changes in my life and always remain oscillating. The performance of the work must be in sync with the development of one's own life in order to be Sincere and powerful.Ideas are later.
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1. Atmosphere and Background
This painting envelops the viewer in a dreamlike ambience. The darkened lower half, rendered through a subtle wet-blending technique, evokes the quiet obscurity of a lake bottom veiled in shadow. It functions as both a literal depth and a metaphorical space—an abyss where forgotten memories lie submerged. The contrast between darkness and illumination creates a meditative tension, inviting reflection on time and remembrance.
2. Light Forms and Symbolism
The boat-shaped luminous figures, painted with gradients of yellow and white, appear to hover and drift across the composition. Their transparent textures, achieved through careful color gradation and contour highlighting, give them an ethereal, almost spectral quality. These forms resemble fragments of memory resurfacing from obscurity, embodying the theme of salvaging the past. The boat becomes a symbolic vessel of memory, while the lake bottom represents the abyss of time and forgetfulness.
3. Human Presence and Contrast
The silhouetted human figure above, reduced to simplified lines and dark contours, contrasts with the glowing boats below. This interplay between the solid and the ephemeral reflects the tension between reality and memory, weight and buoyancy, presence and absence. The figure appears to reach or gaze toward the drifting boats, underscoring the human impulse to reconnect with what has been lost or submerged.
4. Symbolic Narrative
At its core, this painting draws on the language of Symbolism. The boats are not mere objects but carriers of recollection, witnesses to the passage of years. Emerging as radiant forms, they express memory’s resilience against silence. Through the collision of color fields and the dislocation of perspective, the artist stages a dialogue between the present and the vanished, between forgetting and remembering.
5. Emotional Resonance
Every brushstroke and tonal shift participates in decoding the emotional relationship between “the lake bottom” and “the boat.” The drifting motion suggests the journey of life, while the stillness of the depths conveys concealment and introspection. The sudden surfacing of light forms embodies the act of memory breaking free, linking disparate fragments of time and self-awareness. By transforming the boat into a metaphor for the soul’s retrospection, the painting creates a poetic meditation on time, memory, and identity.
6. Surrealist Dimension
Through its imaginative composition and dreamlike transitions, this work embodies the essence of surreal visual translation—turning the intangible into image. Its surreal collisions of form and subtle color shifts invite the viewer into an inward journey, where tenderness and melancholy lie sealed in the submerged depths of memory. The painting is not simply a representation but an evocation of the ineffable, reminding us that memory itself is fluid, fragile, and luminous.
Marc Chagall, I and the Village – Known for its dreamlike composition and vibrant subjective colors, it creates a comparable surreal mood.
Joan Miró, Harlequin’s Carnival – With flowing colors and symbolic forms, it communicates a fantastical sense of mystery.
Sanyu, Blue Star – Through simple brushwork and pure tones, it conveys poetic solitude.
Paul Klee, The Path to Paradise – Employing abstract forms and luminous hues, it constructs a lyrical dreamscape that resonates with this painting’s poetic atmosphere.
The dark blocks at the bottom of the canvas represent the weight of lakebed sediment, while the golden tones above symbolize memory, sunlight, or lost radiance. This contrast of cool and warm colors, light and shadow, allows the artwork to convey a dual meaning—both oppression and hope at the same time.
These semi-transparent boats resemble fragments surfacing from memory. They are not concrete objects but rather “vessels of the vanished past,” reflecting the artist’s longing for life moments and things that have faded away.
The figures appear as shadow-like silhouettes that blur into the horizon line, suggesting the dissolving boundaries between self and memory. This sense of ambiguity emphasizes the psychological atmosphere of the piece rather than a literal narrative.
It can be classified as “contemporary surrealist water-themed painting.” By weaving together illusion and reality through the imagery of the lakebed, the work conveys a sense of spiritual drifting and searching. Pieces like this are particularly suited for contemporary art museums, academic exhibitions, and research on memory and aquatic metaphors in art.
As a “modern fantastical oil painting on lakebed memory,” the piece carries a rare thematic expression in today’s art market. It stands out not only for its layered colors and atmospheric intensity, but also for its symbolic use of the boat to reveal the relationship between human beings and nature, memory and time. For private collectors, this artwork serves as a unique psychological projection as well as a key intellectual piece within a serious collection.
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