Next to the bridge to Bribie Island, there is a Sandstone Point Hotel, which is located on the shore with a beautiful ocean view. Our family went there on a sunny Saturday. Merrily and enthusiastically, our boys refused to return home when they were playing in a playground on the top of a hill near the shore. "Why not have a walk in the lawn outside?" I said, "A few funny birds have been raised there, for which I don't know the names." Then the elder brother was holding the little hand of the younger one, laughing, giggling, and running here and there. I hurried to turn on my mobile phone to take a few photos. The photos captured the real scenes well, but they were lack of expressions of my own feelings and sentiments, which has driven me to paint the watercolour picture "Brothers" recently. I first used a dip pen to apply very light black colour to draw the boundaries of the boys. Then I slowly applied colours on them, first for the skin, then the clothes and finally the hairs. I wish they will be grateful to have a brother to play together at childhood and will love each other after they have grown up. I focus much for the boys on the picture, and after that, I loosely painted the backgrounds such as the lawn, the paths, trees and the sky. I tried to paint it in a more casual style, so that my sentiments can over the picture with the colours more freely.
I recollect that painting was used to be my most favourite activity during childhood. I almost painted everything around me every day, though few people from school knew this until one day I presented a gouache painting of a village as a homework of school holiday. The village is my mother's hometown, and my grandma was still living there at that time. Every school holiday, I would spend a couple of weeks there, accompanying my grandma who typically lived there alone, but for that time my grandpa had back home from Hong Kong. "You paintings are great, and I'm proud of you!" Grandpa said, "But why not use a larger paper?" "I don't have paper in larger size." I said. Then he walked straight to a giant calendar on the wall, starring there for a while, and said, "I've no longer like it but you can paint on the back of the paper." He pulled a piece of paper from the calendar, and asked me to follow him to the entrance of the village where there were many pine trees standing by a pond. When the new semester started, almost all of my classmates shocked when they saw me submit the painting, and many of them ran to me to confirm if it was really done by myself. "He owns a seed of art, and is keen to find out different ways to solve problems in mathematics." My teacher gave such a comment in my student report. When the high school teacher got the report, she paid little attention to my potential in art, but said she's glad to know I was good at maths. At that time math was usually considered as an important foundation to a large number of professional careers, while art was only usually suggested for hobbies. As it had become clear that I could earn a life through STEM in future, my artist dream had been fully abandoned.
Very recently, as my sons like painting, I have resumed my painting as a hobby so that I can play with them. It is one of the most correct changes that I've ever made. On the day when I abandoned my painting brush, I'd also abandoned the way to appreciate surrounding things in life, and I've blocked the most effective way for me to express myself. Through picking up the painting brush again, I again picked up my approach to communicate with the world for many things, my philosophy, my feelings, my mind, and my sentiments. The beautiful views that I've often ignored, have again been impressed; while even the suffers in the past have become precious life experience that can nourished my art!
