New Year's Feast
Aiden C.
Oil on Canvas
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Holidays and other celebrations hold a special place in the heart of every culture, each one bearing its own unique rituals and traditions. Living in such a diverse country, I have come to really appreciate the spiritual power of holidays and wanted to express it in this painting. My painting portrays two Chinese women preparing a bountiful feast for the New Year, a momentous holiday celebrated by a vast and diverse population. Its message is to demonstrate the power celebrations and holidays have to connect people, even those of polar backgrounds. New Year’s, for example, is celebrated all around the world, from the Chinese Lunar New Year to European New Year’s Eve celebrations. Although people are connected more than ever with the advent of the internet and trivialized cross-continent travel, holidays still manage to maintain a magic to bridge divides, sometimes even better than those novel inventions. The piece goes about portraying the message by focusing on people. This is done through the use of color contrast, with a vignette formed by greys surrounding the warm, saturated colors of the food and people. Another method of emphasizing the people is through a difference in detail level. The hands and the face of the woman are more detailed compared to the food and dishware, further highlighting them. While the two women are not directly touching or in very close contact, they are connected by a mutual connection to the food they are making.
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Creativity is the ability to take limited resources to create something unique. Without limits, there is no reason to innovate, as results would merely need brute addition or subtraction. Elegance and experimentation would be pointless.
