Taiwanese Lanterns

The title for my series is “Taiwanese memories through lanterns”. This is a series based

on memories from my childhood growing up in Taiwan. This series of paintings is a way for me to capture my memories and illustrate how I feel when reminiscing about my memories from living in Taiwan. The images depict different kinds of lanterns, such as the chinese traditional lanterns, the paper lanterns, also known as the floating lanterns, and animal lanterns. I am painting these with acrylic on watercolor paper; and the sizes for the paintings are twelve by twelve. What inspired me to start this series was that I wanted to be able to capture the Taiwanese culture in a different way that has not really been done before. Not only that but I also wanted to be able to share with my audience the reminiscing memories I have when thinking about Taiwan. I moved to the United States in 2011, and Taiwan will always be a big part of who I am. When I was growing up, technology was not as advanced as it is now, there were no cameras on phones that we would carry everywhere and easily accessed. Therefore, I would like to grasp the memories I have with my family and the lanterns before we forget about them since we did not take as many pictures at the time. To create nostalgia in my paintings, I make the people in the paintings darker and the backgrounds darker so the lanterns stand out more. Me and my family used to go to the paper lantern festival every year around chinese new year, we would be walking around the park looking at the many different lanterns. It never got old since the subjects of the lanterns were different every year because it was based on the Chinese zodiac. The dark images of my family members create a sense of drawing from memories. In some of the paintings, I also use tissue paper and smudge it with white paint to create a nostalgic mood.