The theme of this year's painting clearly states one - the makeup of desire. People's various desires are wrapped under various makeups. Desires are the intertwining of happiness and pain in life. Either straightforward or subtle, they will appear in makeup, forming a profound look of an era.
Inches: 15.7 x 15.7 in
Size without the frame: 40 x 40 cm
Country: China
Date: 2025
Materials: Acrylic painting on board
Condition: well preserved
Creative themes and style | My works revolve around the creative concept of "The land of humanity, and the people upon it" . The people in the painting are people in nature, and the lines, shapes, and colors are close to nature. The nature in the painting is nature in the eyes of humans, existing in interaction with humans.I don’t pursue a series of works with a fixed and continuous style. I hope that the style of the pictures will synchronize with the changes in my life and always remain oscillating. The performance of the work must be in sync with the development of one's own life in order to be Sincere and powerful.Ideas are later.
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Artwork Interpretation
Subject: The Immediate Theater of the Body
The canvas captures a close-up of the torso and hands, shifting from “a figure within the landscape” to the body as its own event. Compared to Veiled Perception , where the figure in a red dress is placed against a seaside backdrop, here the environmental narrative is abandoned. Instead, the work adopts a tactile perspective that conveys the restlessness of summer.
Form: The Grasp as a Central Verb
The two hands take on a scratching–clenching gesture. The knuckles are exaggerated into claw-like arcs, as if kneading the flesh into waves. The folds converge into a white fissure at the center, functioning both as anatomical detail and as an emotional fault line. Unlike the previous works where the “faceless” figure suggested anonymity, this piece reinforces universality by truncating the body into “headless and footless” fragments.
Composition: The Tension Between Triangles and Fissures
Geometric triangles emerge subtly in the upper left and right corners, set against the central vertical split, creating a push–pull dynamic. The fingers advance along a diagonal, compressing spatial depth and producing a claustrophobic space. This strategy of close-up magnification recalls cinematic framing, in deliberate contrast to the expansive horizons of earlier seascapes.
Color: Heat-Toned Flesh vs. a Cool Base
Large fields of coral and orange-red generate a temperature of flesh, while the fingertips flash with ultramarine, violet, and lemon yellow, mimicking the glisten of sweat and light. The logic of color shifts from the symbolic red dress of earlier works to the physical immediacy of heat and flesh, grounding emotion directly in the skin.
Brushwork: The “Kneading Stroke” of Thickness and Transparency
Along the edges of the fingers, thick impasto is worked back into whorled knife-marks, while the abdominal area is treated with thin washes, leaving semi-transparent layers. The contrast in pressure corresponds to zones of emotion: near the fingertips, strokes grow sharp and aggressive; farther away, they soften.
Content and Theme: From “Being Seen” to “Self-Sensing”
Earlier works emphasized the “veiled face” and mechanisms of spectatorship. Here the narrative turns inward: “How do I feel myself?” The scratching may signal itch, anxiety, or desire—an unnamed composite impulse beyond conventional narrative frames.
Mood and Emotion: Heat, Stifling Pressure, and the Edge of Control
The palette burns hot and the space compresses, evoking the weight of a summer heatwave. Yet the geometric structure reins in the chaos, producing a balance between loss of control and the attempt at restraint. This liminal threshold echoes the season: “The body speaks before language does.”
Unconventional Perspective: Tactile Memory and the “Landscape of Skin”
Here, skin itself becomes a micro-landscape of ridges, valleys, moisture, and reflected light. The transition from seascape waves in earlier works to the folds of flesh marks a migration from external nature to internal nature, where ocean waves and skin creases are metaphorically homologous.
Similar Works for Reference
Francis Bacon: The compressed, distorted tension of flesh, resonating with this work’s suffocating space.
Willem de Kooning, “Woman” series: The frenzied brushwork of hands and flesh, echoed in the rhythm of this grasping gesture.
Egon Schiele: The nervous, angular line of bony hands, comparable to the exaggerated knuckles here.
Jenny Saville: The vast surfaces of skin and confrontational proximity, paralleling the treatment of flesh as “terrain.”
Cecily Brown: The misty oscillation between figuration and abstraction, mirrored in this painting’s flux between form and sensation.
Recommendation: These references highlight the resonance between flesh, gesture, and emotion, offering useful parallels for reading A Restless Summer as a shift from landscape narrative to tactile narrative.
Q1: What does the central white fissure signify?
A1: It functions as both the highlight of a skin fold and a visual metaphor for cool air entering overheated flesh, materializing the tension between suffocation and relief.
Q2: Why are the fingertips painted in blue-violet and lemon yellow?
A2: The cool tones evoke veins and shadow, while the yellow suggests sweat and reflective nail-light, creating a temperature contrast and tactile sting that makes the pressure of the grasp visible.
Q3: What role do the geometric triangles play in the composition?
A3: They act as anchors, stabilizing the fluidity of flesh and producing a sense of controlled disorder. Compared to the open horizons of earlier seascapes, this is a deliberate interior compression.
Q4: What exhibition context best suits this work?
A4: It is ideal for contemporary figurative–expressionist exhibitions, body politics and sensory culture shows, as well as intimate spaces such as small white-cube galleries, private studios, or reading rooms that heighten immersion.
Q5: Where does its collecting value lie?
A5: The compact size 40×40cm makes it accessible as an entry-level collectible. It fuses gesture painting with contemporary body themes, while maintaining continuity with the Veiled Perception series—offering both serial coherence and long-term curatorial value.
What should I pay attention to when buying an artwork or its derivatives?
A: Click here to view ARTPHILOSO's Guide for Collectors.
More paintings from this series：
A Restless Summer 2 A Restless Summer 3 A Restless Summer 4 A Restless Summer 5
A Restless Summer 6 A Restless Summer 7 A Restless Summer 8 A Restless Summer 9 A Restless Summer 10
A Restless Summer 12 A Restless Summer 13 A Restless Summer 14 A Restless Summer 15 A Restless Summer 16
