Changes in life produce changes in the work we do, that seems a given, and it’s especially apparent in the work of visual artists. HPR’sNoeTanigawa spoke with painter SanitKhewhock about the cheery works in his current show.
A show of works by Sanit Khewhock and Janetta Knapp continues at Cedar Street Galleries through September 4.
Sanit Khewhock’s current show at Cedar Street Galleries started with an off putting commission. Khewhock was asked to paint something along the lines of work by Sam Francis, whose work is splashy, colorful.
“But when I started to work, everything changed in myself, because I cannot do the way other people do.”
Who can? But the happy colors rubbed off a little.
“I got tired of the old palette that I used.”
Khewhock was into a grayer scheme with highlights of color, while he was working at one of Honolulu’s art institutions. He’s been painting full time for a few years now.
“I have more freedom, I feel more cheerful than before. I feel refreshing, I want to see more color!”
Happy paintings can scream at you sometimes, these are somehow thoughtful. In one painting, pink petal shapes emerge and link by their stems, there’s a yellowish lotus pod shape and slender lines glisten over a misty green grey.
“I happened to see a book of plankton, and when I look at the plankton that normally you cannot see with the naked eye. You see the shapes, the forms you’ve never seen before. That’s the one that inspired me.”
“What I want to portray is the landscape in my mind but at the same time, I want people to feel familiar with something they see every day.”
It’s an odd sensation. The colors feel interior but familiar, like what you glimpse out of the side of your eye, the shapes recall fruit, jungles, delicious food, but it’s the edges of things that pull you along—some are sharp, some rough, some smudged, some disappear--- There’s good humor alongside patient curiosity.
