粉紫色的樱花树 2019

This painting by 王新福, entitled 粉紫色的樱花树 or Pink Purple Cherry Tree, is built from a flurry of marks and a sugary palette of pink, lilac, cream, and soft blues. I can imagine 王 painting this in multiple sessions, adding layer upon layer of pigment like a thick impasto frosting. I wonder if they were trying to capture the sheer fleetingness of the cherry blossom. I'm thinking about all those artists like Monet and Van Gogh, who were completely obsessed with flowers... I can feel that kind of intensity here. The surface is pure energy! The light almost seems to emanate from the painting itself, like a luminous, almost hallucinatory bloom. Isn't it amazing how a brushstroke can communicate so much? The way 王 piles the paint on, it feels like an attempt to hold onto something ephemeral, to make the intangible tangible. And that's what painting does, right? It's a conversation across time, an attempt to make sense of our world.