Black Series: Night Swims

Night Swims (2017-2022)

“Night Swims Series” (2017-2022) is a project which continues my journey to dive into the dark waters of the human psyche. The characters depicted in the paintings reflect a state of feelings including isolation, solitude, uncertainty and fear. The reflections dancing off of the dark waters surface are a symbolic description of these hidden emotions. They mirror the feelings of the characters as if they were like nocturnal animals that are only comfortable to feed and hunt in the dark.

It was my first experience swimming at night in Lantau Island, Hong Kong in summer 2016 which inspired this project. It is here where I swam far away from the artificial streetlights of the Island, where one could observe the horizon of darkness between the sky and sea. Here was an endless darkness with different layers of black colours. This variety of black colours is also a material study for my colour palettes used in this project.

While painting the Night Swim series, I have poured many of my own emotions into the paintings. Whilst we continue to live and persevere through all ongoing and endless trials and tribulations, the character in every body of water is all of us - fighting against nature’s powerful forces of waves and unpredictable currents, with all of our contrasting meagre strength and breathlessness... yet we continue, against the odds.

《夜遊》的靈感來自2016年夏天，我第一次在香港大嶼山夜間游泳，我對首次夜遊的經驗相當深刻，我在水裏感受到自己的呼吸，恐懼和無助，與此同時，亦想透過夜遊，衝破障礙和枷鎖。我游至海中心，已遠離島嶼的霓燈，在那裡我觀看地平線，看到穿透黑暗的衰弱光線與海洋的黑色變化。無盡的天和海帶有不同層次的黑色，黑色的變化也是我在這個系列中的油彩調色板的物料研究。

在創作《夜遊》系列的過程中，我將情感傾注到了畫作中。透過《夜游》，我想表達在無休止的考驗和磨難中，我們仍繼續生活和堅持，而畫中的每一個人物都是我們。在抵抗大自然強大與不可預測的水流和海浪，我們所有的力量相對而顯得微弱，而或許我們感到氣喘，然而我們仍繼續不顧一切。

“She now looked down into this pool or sea in which everything is reflected- and, indeed, some say that all our most violent passions, and art and religion, are the reflections which we see in the dark hollow at the back of the head when the visible world is obscured for the time. “

“Night had come - night that she loved of all times, night in which the reflections in the dark pool of the mind shine more clearly than by day. It was not necessary to faint now in order to look deep into the darkness where things shape themselves and to see in the pool of the mind.”

-Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928).