“With a simple pencil I express my inner feelings, thoughts and meditations. Many people, like me, face difficulties in life. We all share the great misery of suffering, but also happiness and hope. It is hope that keeps us going.”
The themes in Mac Hoang Thuong’s delicate pencil drawings are the consequences of war; Vietnamese culture and traditions; destiny and loss of innocence.
In Praying Hands Thuong shows the consequences of the war for his generation and how he prays for a peaceful future.
Thuong is proud of his country’s culture and traditions and is happy that he still sees it around him today. However, Pride also expresses his fear of losing these traditions as a result of what he calls “damaging imported culture”, which is “excessive and rebellious”.
In a beautiful way Thuong expresses in Self Portrait how we hold the key to our destiny in our hands, while My Self reminds us to fight life’s influences in order to keep some of the innocence we have when we are young.
In all, Thuong’s works are intense and moving. His use of a simple pencil is extraordinary. Like Arshile Gorky (1904 – 1948), Thuong believes in drawing. Gorky stated, “the essence of painting is drawing” and kept telling his students how much technique matters, in this same way Thuong convinces us of the importance and power of drawing.
Mac Hoang Thuong was born in 1976 in Bac Thai, Vietnam. He now lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City, where in 2001 he graduated from the Fine Arts University. Thuong is currently studying for his Masters Degree at the University of Fine Arts in Ho Chi Minh City.
Mac Hoang Thuong has been exhibiting since 1999. In 2007 he took part in six exhibitions, five of which were in Vietnam and one in Cheongju, Korea. He was a finalist of the prestigious Nokia Asia Pacific Awards, held in Ho Chi Minh City in 2001 and the Vietnam Asean Phillip Morris Awards, held in Hanoi in 2003. His work has been part of the Vietnam Art Awards every year since 1999.
Mac Hoang Thuong is one of Vietnam’s most exciting emerging artists and Voices of Vietnam is his first exhibition in Australia.
