Tong Luo
Home: Levittown, New York
Title: Angela
Media: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 122 x 91 cm
Website: taj-studio.com
ARTIST STATEMENT
Sometimes my best portraits happen when the subject stops cooperating. My daughter Angela was seventeen when I took the photograph for this painting. We had been taking pictures for a while, and by that point she was clearly finished with me. She folded herself sideways into the rattan chair, let one arm fall, tilted her head back, and stared toward the ceiling with the exhausted expression of someone who had already given me more than enough of the afternoon. I thought it was funny. I also knew immediately that there was something special in the photograph. As a painter, I am always collecting images. I have spent most of my life watching for the small moments when a person suddenly becomes visually alive. Sometimes it is a gesture, the turn of a head, the shape of a hand, the light across a face, or an expression that disappears almost as soon as I notice it. Those moments are difficult to plan. Often, they happen when someone has stopped thinking about being photographed at all. That was Angela in this picture. Her bangs had recently been cut much shorter than she wanted, and she hated them. Her long braid fell over her shoulder. She was tired, a little messy, completely relaxed, and no longer interested in posing nicely for me. As her father, I felt bad about the haircut. As a painter, I could see that it belonged in the picture. The short bangs, the tilted head, the slumped body, and the serious expression made her look so particular and so completely herself.
There is also something funny about how tragic she appears. The painting makes her look as though something terrible had happened. In reality, she was tired of posing, unhappy with her haircut, and probably wondering when I was finally going to put the camera away. But I knew this Angela very well. At home she could be funny, stubborn, sensitive, affectionate, impatient, messy, and wonderfully dramatic. With our family, she did not have to present herself to anyone. She could collapse into a chair, complain, make us laugh, and simply be comfortable. That ease is part of what I recognized in the photograph. Years later, when I returned to the image as a painting, I saw it differently. Seventeen had already passed. The haircut was gone. She had grown older. What once seemed like a funny photograph from an ordinary afternoon had become a record of my daughter at one very particular moment in her life. I muted the colors and allowed scratches, stains, faded areas, and worn passages to remain in the surface. I wanted the painting to carry the feeling of memory. Time does not preserve everything equally. Some details disappear, while a posture, an expression, or the way my daughter once sat in a chair can remain surprisingly clear. At the time, it was just one ordinary afternoon with my daughter. Years later, I can see why the moment stayed with me. She was tired, comfortable, messy, dramatic, and completely herself. That was the girl I knew at home.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
A figurative oil painter and former university professor, the artist has more than thirty years of studio, exhibition, and teaching experience across China, Canada, and the United States. Trained at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and the New York Academy of Art, his practice centers on portraiture and the human figure, often beginning with his own photography and close observation of gesture, expression, atmosphere, and memory.