5:00-5:30 - Painting with the Sky, Dancing with the Time
“5:00 - 5:30” is a painting that explores the vitality of colors through the direct observation of the sunset during a specific time frame. It embodies the involvement of time and the intrinsic quality of transformation, which the painting progressively unifies into a mixture of work and personal experience.
This is the first time I ever had the strong urge to document my thoughts and what I have learned during and after making this painting, because the creative process is just as essential and critical as the result itself. These particular moments and thoughts were fleeting, so they could be easily lost if I didn’t write them down. Also, as much as I don’t want to spoil the entire rationale and exercise to the viewers, I think the creative process meant so much to me that I have to share this humbling experience.
What does this title mean, and what did the inspiration come from?
Before I started even getting the canvas, I already knew the painting would be titled “5:00-5:30”. And yes! It’s the time frame.
I have always loved San Francisco’s sky. Especially during (used to be 6:00-6:30 before the daylight saving time) 5:00-5:30 - sunset - the entire sky would put on a captivating show, most of the time, to unhurriedly dye its space with a melange of colors. I used to tell my previous partner to always look up when the sunset starts, but they were always indifferent to that matter. But my appreciation for the shimmering lights and sublime colors has never changed.
Inspiration from De Young Museum
After I decided to paint San Francisco’s sky and gift it to Eric, someone who took his time to appreciate the sky with me when I pointed it out, for his birthday. I had to think about how should I approach and engage with the canvas with all these colors. Should I include the objects (houses, trees, transmission poles) that lay under it? Should it be more expressive and semi-abstract, or impressionistic-ish (had to ponder upon Monet’s ways of apprehending light and color)?
With these wonders in mind, I made a trip to De Young Museum and came across one of Mark Rothko’s color field paintings in the modernism section.
Untitled, 1948 by Mark Rothko
Rothko’s color field series will always stand out to me in any museum because of its well-known large canvas and distinctive colors. Standing right in front of this stature, I felt confused at first, but strangely humbled by this immersive, softly collided warm colors. Knowing Rothko’s intent is to evoke basic human emotions, I could certainly feel my consciousness were going through an interesting ride - from a peculiar state confronted by this monumental work to resonating his work with the ideas I had in mind for my own creative process.
I jotted down a couple of keywords for what my painting would be centered around: “slowly built up,” “edge feathered out,” “humbling,” etc.
Planning
Things I purchased
I purchased three things for this project: The 60 by 72 canvas I got, which was over half of my height, a plain white shirt, and a pair of shorts. Since I was using a large canvas, I envisioned that my body would be consistently interacting with the canvas - it’s almost inevitable to get paint all over. I intended to only wear this white outfit while I paint, so as my canvas gets gradually worked on and my clothes would get painted on too, which could be potentially part of the work or archived.
Planning the schedule
I wanted to only paint during 5:00-6:00 PM, so I could capture every shade of the sunset thoroughly during that time frame. I also gave myself a deadline of seven days to complete. Therefore, I had a general idea of what my pace would be, but with no expectation of its form and composition. I was excited about the unknown, and I wanted to be explorative.
In the past, whether it was plain air, still-life, or portrait painting, there always were tangible references that could somewhat guide me through the creating process, which made certain aspects of the process easier to tackle. However, this time, I relied on my spontaneity - I went with the flow and the rhythm under that limited one hour of observation, interaction, and creation.
The Creative Process
Painting with the sky
On the first day, I underestimated how fast the sun approached the horizon. While I was putting down the first layer of color onto the canvas, the sky had already painted itself into another hue. And I put my head down to mix the matching color; after one minute, when I looked up, the previous color I was trying to grapple with was already gone. It was fascinating how the sky changes so drastically yet in the most subtle way. The sequence of the change looked fleeting and sudden at that moment, yet it was steadily gradual. Without knowing how this painting would turn out, I was startled and felt like I was racing with another painter, which was the sky itself.
When the sun completely disappeared from the horizon, the nightfall unfolded. The darkest blue had emerged. I was in such a zone that I did not bother to turn the light on. I continued to paint under the dark - to seize that last 10 minutes I had. The color I mixed might not be precise but it was the condition of immediacy that mattered to me the most. Whatever happened during that one hour should be authentically captured and preserved.
The first day was overwhelming, but in the most positive way - constantly moving my body under this grand space, immersed by every intensity of the warmest and the coolest color. My heart was truly inspired and humbled.
On the second day, 5PM, the sunset arrived with a tranquil blue. Immediately, I started to mix and rapidly dashed the color onto the canvas by using a palette knife only. I felt like I had no time to switch between my tools.
After a certain time, the pale and translucent orange light began to gradually seep through the blues. In the middle of its work, they collided and reconciled into a harmony of gradients - at its climax, the blue dyed into teal and the orange reaches peach. At last, the sky was drenched in an array of pigmentations.
For the following four days, I repeated the same preparation and process as day one: paint only during 5:00 - 6:00 PM; wear the same clothes; use only palette knife to maneuver on the canvas. These “rules” that I trusted and followed provided me with a sense of direction for my painting, yet they also brought constraints into my creative process where my technique were rather limited.
At its early stage, I was unsure about how the painting would come together because of the absence of composition - since each day, the sunset unveiled a different set of colors; thus, it was hard to resume the progress from the previous day. Nevertheless, one of my core objectives was to rapidly capture these fleeting moments (lights). It allowed me to work swiftly, which I barely had the opportunity to think otherwise. I kept putting a new layer of colors on top of each other despite the knife marks I made early on.
After this repetitive palette knife technique, one paint mark after another, the colors soon made collisions everywhere on the canvas, like the dazzling fireworks - they began to blend and soar, weaving into each other splendidly that added a vigorous texture.
On day five, I had to take a moment to appreciate the mercurial sky. I was profoundly surprised at the state of the sunset, that very fugitive moment. It caught me off guard because how unpredictably stunning it was. I didn’t even know which part of the sunset I should start to capture first.
I spent quite a while immersing myself under the sky. I felt like a whole, a body bathing under the silky, warm colors complemented by the teal. Like me, the wooden light pole seemed extra quiet that day and stood there steady and in awe.
Dancing with the time (food for thought)
In the midst of this creative progress, I had to contemplate the concept of time and how my painting experience was directly influenced by time. Introspectively speaking, I haven’t painted in a very long time, especially with this new format (going outside and setting rules); when I stood outside of my backyard, at exactly 5PM for six days, I felt the immediate temporal shift every time I enter that space. Because I was immersed in a wide-open space full of lively lights and colors, I had to constantly scrutinize my surroundings. These course of actions were not part of my daily activity, so when the new regimen started to become repetitive, it left me with many brand new perspectives. This explains why I felt disconnected and diverged from my everyday life into a zone where I experienced time differently during that one hour.
The “time” that I experienced differently during that one hour was constituted by the perspectives I gained from the entire creative process. There were several performative aspects of my creative process that allowed me to have these new perspectives: be punctual in starting the project at 5PM for consecutive six days (a form of interacting with time); change my clothes to the white outfit when I start to paint; only use a palette knife to make cohesive paint marks. All of these new routines were intentionally set up, and when they were reached with repetitions, they sought to form new perspectives.
I was granted the new perspectives of how to articulate and translate the ephemeral moments of nature into something substantial, observe lights and colors in the most intricate and transformative way, and most importantly, how to continuously find boundless beauty in everything nature lays.
I remember Vincent Van Gogh once said
“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
