Growing up amongst 5 siblings, I had skillfully mastered on-demand body temperature control, which means I was able to have a fever whenever I wanted. It was a bulletproof plan to get out of school and head into the city with my dad to seek professional medical help.
We lived in a small town in Yangmei, Taiwan. The prospect of visiting the capital city Taipei was very exciting, especially because I got to have 1:1 time with my dad and hang out at his office. It was a rare treat.
After visiting the doctor, my dad would get me a tea egg 茶叶蛋 (it’s a boiled egg that is stewed inside a tea soup with star anise, cinnamon sticks, and Sichuan peppercorns), milk, and a donut. By that time, my fever would have miraculously disappeared. Before heading home, we would stop by the art museum––the happiest place in the world. My dad taught me how to observe and appreciate art. He asked me to walk close to a painting to see the color, blending techniques, and the use of shadow to create the 3D effect. Then he instructed me to slowly walk backward while keeping my eyes fixed on the painting to feel the emotion from the artist. “Squint!” He would say to make my vision blurry to see the art again that way. We would spend hours doing just that––zoom in and out at each painting.
I often wondered what was in each painter’s mind? What was their life story? Did they know they wanted to be a painter at age 5 just like me? Did they also have to make themselves sick in order to go to an art museum with their dad? Maybe they liked to look out the window and daydream.
Years later, I am still applying the zoom in and out technique when I create my art and it’s pretty much how I live my life in general:
- Getting super-focused working on the details
- Immediately following by stepping away to see the whole picture
- Repeating the process
One caveat is that my dad is not an artist. In fact he has red-green color blindness. So all these years when we visited the art museum, he was seeing many shades of gray.
Hey Dad, if you are reading this, thank you for nurturing my love for art. Without you, I probably would not have developed the skills I needed to express myself through color. <3
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