Tristesse
Based on Etude in E Major
“TRISTESSE”
Frederic Chopin
2011
My mind is filled with the melody. I close my eyes and see the streets with raindrops flowing in the air, people walking by quickly holding the umbrellas that cover their heads. The sound of water splashing and the sound of footsteps echoing between stonewalls and pavement. Fog blurs the city and the shades of lights. Only shadows are left behind, wondering around the buildings, passing by without seeing the others’ faces, buttoning up their coats in the chilly air, fading away into the mist...
-- 2011
Street View
140 x 110 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
By the Window
150 x 110 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
In the Garden
120 x 90 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
Bustling Streets
160 x 100 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
Unfamiliar Place
120 x 80 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
Stormy Street
150 x 70 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
Scattered Eventide
120 x 90 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
Rain & Fog
120 x 90 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
Same Boat Passenger
120 x 90 cm
Oil on Canvas
2011
The series was inspired by Etude in E, "Tristesse" by Chopin. He wrote this piece at a young age, in France, while departing from someone that he loved. He named it in Franch, with the word meaning "sad".
2011, at the age of 19, once heard the piece, a sad yet elegantly beautiful story came to me in fragmented scenes. In which there were rainy streets, foggy views, dancing movements... the moments in life when people meet, and the separated paths leading them apart. At last, they came together and formed something invisible to the eyes: the marks left in memories.
The series therefore I painted, became one of my most particulars in style. I used simple colors and rough knife strokes to capture the fragments in my head. Rough, but over all, quiet. Just like the story, the love, the sadness.
I think, at the age full of questions to the unknowns of life, the foggy sensation was in my vision toward life. It appeared to many of my works of that period.
