After finishing three other Cheongsam paintings, I started this work with a new Cheongsam canvas design and thicker gauge canvas as described in this blog:

https://eliza-rawlings.com/2024/11/04/ma-u2-cheongsam-dress-canvas-new-method-and-design/

I then explored the possible subjects for this painting and decided to focus on food. In the last two ‘food’ Cheongsam paintings, food was used as a racial identity metaphor. Food in the context of this new painting is about memories of family dinners in the 1970s when I was growing up in Hong Kong. Food was and still is a very important part of the Hong Kong culture. Family dinners are very important and day-to-day life often centres around family dinners. The Hong Kong society is a fusion of many cultures and this is strongly reflected in its food. I want to make a series of paintings to explore my childhood memories and tell my transcultural stories through my family dinners.

METHOD

The idea of making paintings about my family dinners came to me when I visited my sister and she cooked a dish of steamed whole seabass with ginger, spring onions, shiitake mushrooms and coriander in soy sauce. She reminded me this was exactly the same recipe that our late mother used to cook for our family dinners. Seeing the dish and her description triggered many deeply buried memories. I started to remember all the different dishes that my mother use to cook – all those memories that I have long forgotten. I took a photo of my sister’s steamed fish as I wanted to incorporate that into my painting.

As soon as I returned home, I started to research images of dishes that I have had and worked on the composition. Below are some examples created using Adobe Fresco:

Here is a video of the Fresco creation process:

I also used my sketchbook to experiment with different compositions.

The previous Cheongsam paintings were in acrylic on calico canvas and I wanted to paint in oil for this work because I enjoy painting in oil and I wanted to return to oil after not doing so for some time. Also, I had in mind that the toppings for the fish would be ‘piled up’ and I felt that oil paint would give me more freedom and time to play with getting the right texture. I usually just start painting straight away on the canvas, but on this occasion, something was holding me back and I had the urge to do some study drawings first to give me time to think about the details and composition. Below is the study drawing for the fish dish:

At the top of this blog, I listed an earlier blog about using a new design for the Cheongsam with thicker canvas material. This latest dress design and material combination caused the waist area to crease on the mannequin. So far, I have painted all the previous Cheongsams on a mannequin. However, for this one, I felt that it needed to be painted flat to eliminate the creases during the painting process. So I moved the canvas from the mannequin to the easel.

Painting moved to the easel so that I could paint on a flat surface:

I proceeded to mark out the composition starting with the centre piece – the steamed fish. The placement of the fish dish is reflective of a Chinese family dinner where the steamed fish (if on the menu) would typically be placed in the centre as the signature dish.

Having roughly marked out the fish dish, I added a plate of steamed baked beans. Since Hong Kong is/was such a fusion of different cultures and heavily influenced by the British due to colonialism, it was not unusual to have imported tinned food served alongside traditional Chinese dishes in my family. In hindsight, it sounds strange and funny to serve these two very different dishes together; but at the time it was the most natural thing – food was just food especially for a child. I never thought about their origins or the reasons that caused these two dishes to came to be served next to each other. I remember my mother calling baked beans ‘pork beans’ at the time and I remember at times there were small pieces of pork fat among the beans. I researched this and found that manufacturers did put pieces of pork in with the beans but removed them due to World War II meat rationing. I am not sure if they reintroduced pork in the 1970s or if what we ate were left over from the old pre-war stock!

Other dishes were gradually added to the menu, each dish having their individual significance in the role they played in our family dinner. I also enlarged the two fish to give them more prominence and I wanted a tight composition as from memory, dinner tables in Hong Kong were always crowded with food.

I tried using charcoal with oil which I had never done before and below are photos of the initial experiment on oil-paper:

The experiment was not satisfactory because the charcoal did not work well on oil-paper, so I returned to experimenting on the canvas:

I was pleased with the charcoal effect and proceeded to paint the fish:

Toppings of spring onions, shiitake mushrooms etc. were added in thick layers of oil paint:

Time to add the dessert – Del Monte fruit cocktail.

To complete the composition, I added pattern details from the Chinese dinner set that my parents used at the time around the various dishes on the painting.

The completed front part of the Cheongsam painting:

The painting was put back onto a mannequin as I wanted the oil paint to cure according to the shape that it would eventually be displayed in. Then green satin ‘frog’ fasteners were added to complete the Cheongsam look.

Below are images of the finished front half of the painting with –

-Steamed whole fish with spring onions, ginger, coriander and sliced shiitake mushrooms in soy sauce;

-Braised pork belly with preserved mustard greens;

-Gai Lan (greens) with oyster sauce;

-Steamed baked beans (imported) and

-Del Monte fruit cocktail (imported).

‘Family dinner #1‘, oil and charcoal on 240gsm cotton canvas. Size: 98 x 68 x 28cm.

REFLECTIONS

So many thoughts and memories went through my mind while making this painting, it is hard to know where to start for my reflections. Like I have done before, I will use ‘free writing’ to capture them as they come into my consciousness as I write.

– Only in hindsight when I am doing this painting did I realise what a strange fusion of cuisine we experienced growing up in Hong Kong. Not only because imported tinned food like ‘pork beans’ (now known as baked beans) were served alongside carefully prepared Cantonese dishes, but the fact that the beans were steamed in a wok to heat up was rather amusing. Since my mother would not have known how baked beans were meant to be served, so steaming in a wok was her default method. As children, we loved mixing the baked beans with our boiled rice in our bowls because of the sugar and salt in the beans. Like many children all over the world, we (sadly) appreciated the processed food more than the poor mother’s fresh cooking!

– My father was the patriarch. He expected a well cooked meal twice a day (he used to come home for lunch). If the meal was not up to standard then there would be consequences. He was not physically violent but there would be a ‘dark cloud’ over our dinner, eaten in silence with the children exchanging glances but no one dared utter a word. The rejected dishes would be sent back to the kitchen to be remedied if possible (if overcooked then not possible).

– So my mother had to deliver two perfect cooking performances per day, everyday. Chinese cooking can be challenging, to get the taste balance, texture, freshness, aesthetics (just to name a few requirements) correct for every dish is very demanding. Especially when the ‘judge’ had high expectations. For example, for a steamed whole fish, the fish had to be cooked just right, not overcooked or undercooked – this is challenging even for restaurant chefs. If there was steamed fish then as soon as my father sat down at the table, he would split the fish open along the spine bone with his chopsticks and examine the ‘colour’ of the flesh, if there was any hint of pink along the spine ( meaning undercooking) then the chopsticks would be slammed down as a gesture of disapproval, no words needed to be said and the dish would be taken back to be remedied. It is no wonder my mother sometimes used Western tinned food to make up the number of dishes to get by. Since my father worked for the Hong Kong Government and was a life-long civil servant to the ‘Colonial Crown Service’, he was very accepting of Western tinned food because we (the colonised) were led to believe that anything from the West was superior. So in this context, colonialism in fact brought with it some occasional relief for my mother in her job of family meals planning.

– I think I chose a bright yellow background for my Cheongsam dinner because I love food and enjoying good food makes me happy as it is such a key part of my heritage. I always wanted family dinners to be fun, bright and cheerful. Although there were often ‘dark clouds’ that loomed over our family dinners, as kids, we would find reasons to giggle at the dinner table – it was our way of responding to the situation through kids’ humour.

– The background yellow is also similar to one of the dinner sets that my parents had hence I incorporated some of its design onto the dress. I will elaborate about the dinner set design on the back of the dress as it has an interesting history.

– There were other back stories to the dishes on the painting and on how ‘the family dinner’ was often where the dynamics of my parents’ relationship played out. I am reluctant to detail all of them because it would be unfair to my parents who are not around to say whether they wanted their stories to be told. Also, I am not sure if I am ready to express everything yet.

– I wonder, how does one find out if the dead would want their stories told and how does one decide whether to tell them anyway? Also, I can only tell a story through my lens, so whose story would I be telling?

– Recently, I have been thinking a lot about ‘process vs outcome’ in my practice. I have thought more deeply about this since I started to make Cheongsam paintings. I think it is because the work takes longer and involves more complexity, so the extensive creative process gives me time to think more deeply. Especially with this Family Dinner painting – the composition is more complex than the previous ones and painting in oil takes longer which is part of why I love to paint in oil – the process and materiality force me to take my time. The surrendering of agency to the process elates me. My thinking during my making process comes in many forms, such as reflections and memory recalls that I would often incorporate into my painting, or ‘put aside’ in my ideas bank for future paintings. All these thoughts go towards the sense-making of my journey, my identity and the world around me. It is right now at this very moment in time while writing this set of reflections that I have come to truly understand what ‘sense-making’ means – to me. I wish I could bottle this moment before the thought eludes me.

– I wrote in my research paper about two transcultural artists and their sense-making that takes place on the canvas. For the paper, I researched about sense-making and how that process fundamentally supports the human survival. In the context of migration, people displacement or in a transcultural setting, where the environment is new or constantly changing – I believe the opportunity to reflect and make sense of one’s experience is essential to survival in a meaningful way; to feel belonged in the world and not merely to exist. Unfortunately for many, the quest for physical survival can be overwhelming therefore depriving them of the opportunity for the much needed sense-making.

LEARNING

When I first started planning the structure of my blogs at the start of my MA programme, I had planned for the REFLECTIONS section to be free-thinking and free-flowing, capturing whatever came to mind related to the work or during the making process. The LEARNING section is there to bring the thinking back to the context of my practice to extract any practice-related learning and plan the next steps. This structure has helped me to develop my practice so far and is becoming even more important as my reflections become more extensive and ‘free’. So I will now try to extract some learning from the this piece of work and the above reflections.

– Referring to my thoughts on ‘process vs outcome’, there is increasing clarity for me as to why I am not always bothered about the work once it is finished. For me, the work is a way to provide a process – the process is more precious to me. The process gives me quality thinking time and it ‘walks with me’. I enjoy making very much, but it is the making while thinking or reflecting that is the most valuable for me.

– So what am I going to do with this realisation, or confirmation of what is valuable for me in my practice? I don’t know yet, maybe I don’t need to do anything to bring these thoughts to a conclusion, perhaps it is just a beginning with no end – that feels exciting. So I will go with ‘it’ and try not to over think ‘it’.

– I have thought a lot about how I could capture some of the more abstract elements that came out during the making process, perhaps onto a piece of physical work – could be painting, writing, 3D etc.. I remember in a much earlier blog, I talked about wanting to find ways to express my thoughts through abstraction as that might liberate me to express more freely without the confinement of physical preconceptions. A specific image that has been recurring in my mind since finishing the Family Dinner painting was the pink tinge (of blood) that would sometimes be visible along the fish’s spine as my father parted the flesh of an undercooked fish with his chopsticks. For me, that tinge of pink symbolised innocence and trouble at the same time. I need to do something with that pink to get it out of my head.

– As I was making this painting, many memories of other interesting family dishes and stories came to mind and I am bursting to paint more dinners to capture them.

– I also need to complete the back of this dress. I had originally thought about painting a second dinner on the back, but I have decided to not do this because I want to save some of the dishes for other dresses as I want to make a series of several ‘Family Dinner’ paintings. Also, I want to paint the design of the dinner set that my parents had because it has an interesting history.

– As for the new Cheongsam sewing pattern that I used for this painting canvas – I am very pleased with the new design because it does not have any darts so the canvas can be painted flat which means I can use thicker canvases and paint in oil which is my preferred medium for this current series of painting.

– The new Cheongsam canvas design also means I have reduced the making time of the canvas from two days down to around half a day. This improvement was due to a simpler design and my experience gained in making these canvases – I am now more confident in sewing with my machine and quicker in trouble-shooting. This means I have more time for the other parts of the creative process.

– A key learning in making Family Dinner #1 was to take time in my making. I have in the past rushed my work, for no specific reason but to just ‘get things done’. The study drawing of the steamed fish was invaluable for me and gave me the confidence to experiment and take chances when painting on the canvas because of my enhanced observations. I now appreciate why artists make study drawings!

NEXT STEPS

– Paint the back of Family Dinner #1 with the family dinner set design.

– Start to research and make Family Dinner #2.

– Continue to take time in my making, e.g. allow time to make study drawings and appreciate materiality.

– Experiment and play: do some abstract paintings of ‘the pink tinge’ to explore how to capture some of the ‘magic’ that I have felt during my making process.