“I express the life around me. It is always changing in a wonderful way. Life creates unpredictable things, things we don’t know in advance.”
Tran Van Thao paints about his daily life – about building his house, the joys of his relationship with his young children and beautiful wife. He paints the mood he is in, and lately he must have been in a
good mood.
Rain in the Sunlight is a series of acrylic paintings he started in 2008 as sequence to the previous series: Blue Skies and Fairy Tales that was exhibited in Ho Chi Minh City in 2007. His work is friendly and warm, naïve and almost childlike on some occasions. Not surprisingly when you realise that his young son is the main source of inspiration for him at the moment. The bright vibrant colours, blue being the dominant one in the Rain in the Sunlight series are appealing and likeable.
But his work goes beyond just being likeable. With his intuitive and loose paint handling, his use of colour and spontaneous expression, Thao has found the quintessence of abstraction.
Born in 1969 in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, Tran Van Thao graduated from both the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts College (in 1981) and the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts University (in 1986).
Thao was drawn to the American abstract art movement, and with a Starr Foundation Fellowship he worked and lived in New York in 2002. Thao is recognised as one of the pioneers, and now leading artists of the abstract movement in Vietnam and is highly respected by his peers and collectors.
Thao has travelled extensively in Asia, Europe and America over the past fifteen years and his works have been included in major exhibitions at the Tropical Museum in Amsterdam (Netherlands), Singapore National Art Museum, Fujita Vente Art Museum in Tokyo (Japan), the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (Philippines), Meridian International Center in Washington DC (USA), Wallonie Brussels Center (Belgium), Pusan Metropolitan Art Museum (Korea), the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and the Huntington Beach Art Center in California (USA).
Voices of Vietnam is Thao’s first exhibition
in Australia.
Tran Van Thao’s work is represented in numerous private and public collections, most notably the Post Vi Dai Art Collection (Switzerland), The Vietnam National Art Museum in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum and The Singapore National Art Museum.
