Returning

Yuhuan Zhang
Painting, 2023

Returning grew out of my move back to Honolulu, a place that had been home for many years. Although it was not my original home, it was where my artistic self fully developed. Our home, a mile from the University of Hawaiʻi Manoa campus, was where my daughter grew up and where I matured as an artist in which I have been referring to as the third life given. The first was my birth home in china and the second, my eye opening experiences in moving and schooling in California in my youth. Coming back to Hawaii this time, I felt a palpable sense of belonging. That feeling gave the painting its name.

The work began as the third project in an undergraduate advanced painting course, for which we were asked to create an abstract painting. I chose earth tones that recall pigments traditionally derived from natural minerals and plants; techniques I adopted glazing as in traditional oil painting to all maximum transparency between layers. Gestures inspired by Chinese calligraphy move through these layers. Having grown up in China, I carry the influence of Chinese calligraphy and painting in my aesthetic sensibility and approach to making marks.

As I worked, I removed paint in vertical passages across the canvas, revealing the layers beneath. This subtractive process exposed earlier gestures, the underpainting, and, in places, the raw canvas. Returning became an action within the painting itself: removing paint brought me back to its underlying surfaces. Both the colors’ associations with natural materials and the gradual exposure of the canvas gave physical form to the idea of return.

The painting evokes bare earth, decomposing roots and branches, halos of suspended flower petals and leaves, and interlacing sunlight. These suggestions of nature mingle with memories of home and the visual traditions that shaped me. Returning is my homage to coming home,  to a place where my daughter’s childhood, my adult life, and my development as an artist are deeply rooted.