Painting: The Tudor-Style House on the Corner of Austin St. and 82 Ave.

It is warm today. I walked all the way to Kew Garden, Queens after lunch. I didn't discover this area till a few days ago when my wife and I went to the Kew Garden Cinema.  I like the area. Walking in the street, I felt like going back in time with everything was stylishly out-of-date. Entering the cinema, you would be attacked by a strong odor of old furniture, which reminded me of flea market smell. The store signs and the way those small restaurants, bars, boutique stores, flower shops, grocery stores, barber shops, etc. were maintained in such a manner that they made me believe those stores could stay like this for at least another century. I selected the view with an old Tudor house on the street corner. 

I was facing the sun but it wasn't glaring at noon because of the clouds. In the process of painting, I came to understand what many artists had said about the relationship between painting and reality. It is true that painting is just the artist's interpretation of the value and color relationships in reality. It is not the same at all as reality. As a matter of fact, the first impression of the view was something like a woodcut picture. However, as I was painting, I had to constantly reminded myself that I shouldn't go to the other extreme when my eyes were used to the environment. If you strain your eyes on the same spot for too long, you can be distracted by endless number of details.

One thing happens to me time and again whenever I am doing plein air painting outside. There are always interested people stop to chat with me. Oftentimes my answer that I came from Florida doesn't not satisfy people. In order to help them avoid losing sleep at night, I have to tell them that I am from China. Today a road construction worker told me that he was from Honduras as if trying to be fair with me. also he told me that his brother was now working in Harbin, China and it was very cold there in Manchuria... I am not really offended by people's nosiness. It amuses me if they like to keep me company.