Vina Blair: Graceful Abstracts Arrive from Malaysia

“I feel that I’ve made very bold attempts and breakthroughs at this point, and I’m excited to be exhibiting in both New York City and Guangzhou, China this year,” she says.  She will be presenting her work at two art expos in both locations: Art Expo New York in April and the Guangzhou Art Fair in June.

In her current body of work, she then turns that affinity into lush, swirling abstract works. In many of her paintings, she uses a limited color palette, her brush strokes and lines speaking in a kind of inchoate language, resembling sky, wind, water, and floral elements. “My themes are full of philosophical speculations,” she asserts.

Largely a self-taught painter, she relates that to her, “Art is an effective communication tool that could touch others’ hearts,” a belief which has encouraged her to create expansively.

She adds “I create layered surfaces and use a strong palette, letting them both flow together to make a lyrical and yet deeply concrete image.”

In her past photographic work, she manipulated her images to shape abstract works focused on “identity, relationships, emotions like desire and despair;” images that took on the quality of dreams

In her painted work, she likes rich blues and glowing golds, streaks of thick white, ribbons of color that seem to twine and dance. Watery images implode with light; others seem to resemble cyclones and rivers, caligraphy and a kind of Rorschach test of art.

The work moves and shifts as the viewer does; the tumult of curves and lines compelling and intuitive. Blair transcends location and neatly edges into a kind of universal conception of color and movement that evokes the origins of life.

Her “birth” of abstract images is not about fury and fire but rather more about a shifting perspective, a kind of formless grace, and a sense of transition, an acceptance of change.