Pham Thanh Van

Biography

On Pham Thanh Van
TRUONG CÔNG NGUYÊN, M.A.
Head of Department of Art Theory and History

Artist Pham Thanh Van, born in 1977, graduated from the Vietnam University of Fine Arts in the year 2000. After graduation, she returned to her teaching as a lecturer of the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. From then on, with her good store of artistic knowledge and personal experiments, she continued to advance on her artistic journey with the genre of oil painting.

Should anyone have an understanding of Oriental culture and philosophy, he would certainly know that there exists a cosmic internal relationship between the universal and the specific, as a philosopher once said:

“The whole world is seen in a speck of sand, And Heaven in a single flower.”

Bearing this in mind, when visiting Pham Thanh Van’s pictures, we’ll see that despite simplicity and gentleness, they are full of profound poetry; the rhythms of the four seasons alone would suffice to imply both a “religious” and “worldly” intension. The pictures’ attributes in general such as “simplicity” seems to be devoid of artistry but it evolves in reality some empty, suggestive and almost incomplete inner feelings which makes people sense that it is a special artistic means of expression instead. This also includes the artist’s economy of lines and strokes: the pictures’ empty spaces are intentionally created to convey something meaningful; they are not merely blank spaces between figures and shapes.

The paintings “Golden Autumn”, “Red Afternoon” are a subtle combination of European plastic art portraying with the sensitive and profound view of Oriental culture. They make us feel as if we were hearing a good poem or a lyrical piece of music. The seemingly vague and simple landscapes and things in the picture are often wrapped up in a foggy veil to inspire haziness and an immensity that brings freshness in a glance. All this will help the viewer to escape from the hustle and bustle inherent in his everyday life. It also brings a message to those who, while indulging themselves in viewing the picture, know how to decipher the sophisticated artistic code and manage to grasp the essence of life in the simplest attribute of naturalness.