Hoa Cong Kim
Born: 1962 in Hanoi, Vietnam
Education: Graduated from the Hanoi Industrial Fine Arts College in 1985 Current Position: Artist, Art Teacher at Friendship Cultural Palace, (and mother with infant)
Cong Kim Hoa explores the use of colours and composition to produce semi-abstract motives in her paintings, where one can often recognize faces, fish or lotus flowers. Her paintings may be viewed as an artistic approach to showing elements of traditional Vietnamese life.
The technique of lacquer paintings came to Vietnam around A.D. 1450 when a Vietnamese Mandarin was sent to China to learn about this particular form of art. The lacquer painting technique has hit a renaissance due to a group of artists in Vietnam who have taken the difficult art form into the 21st Century. It is a very meticulous work to produce a lacquer painting, and the process can take several months to complete. First, a piece of board is being prepared and polished to serve as a template. The lacquer substance is then applied and polished, often in 8 – 10 layers. Colours, silver and gold leaf, mother of pearl, eggshell and other substances are applied between the layers of lacquer. The process is very time consuming and requires a lot of skills. It is difficult to know the final result and have full control of the colours, even with many years of experience. Lacquer paintings will often be relatively more expensive than oil paintings. The wooden template has to be prepared specifically for the painting, and it will take up to two months or more to complete the lacquer painting due to the many layers of lacquer which have to be applied and the very intensive polishing work. It is assuring to know however, that lacquer paintings cannot be ‘faked’ since the colours depend on the layer in which they have been applied. Lacquer paintings are also very durable.
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