Traffic Poles: a Real Abstraction of Nature and Being

One artist said, “By painting something that’s apparently nothing, it has the opportunity to become everything.” This Traffic Poles Project is a practice of observing and looking. It all started with a simple question: What does one think of the intersection between the times 4 and 6pm? To me, it’s a breathtaking drive blessed by red lights for an opportunity to enjoy the sunset. So I made landscape of the city streets and intersections casted in the changing color of the sky. For those who might have been too frustrated with traffic or too busy with life to see it. I noticed the liveliness of each traffic pole as I painted them; the way their arm bends and turns. They have always been standing at the corner along with the trees, I see them everyday without looking. So for this project my painting zooms in on the traffic poles. The results leads me to reflect on the amount of authority those poles have on my painting, and me. Visually, they pop up the sky so the rest of my painting could live in such a space, without them this space would collapses onto the surface. I follow all of their signals exactly when painting them just as if I was driving down the road: trying my best to stay in the lines and only steer away as the pole indicates when and where. If I fail to stay in the lines, one can catch it in my painting; and if one fail to stay in the lines, the camera will catch he/she on the road.