Freda Chiu (Exeunt)

Losing loved ones and being forgotten is my personal fear. After the sudden death of my father, this inspired me to become more appreciative of life and to ponder over questions that will never be answered. Oil painting allowed me to conjure fear and confusion from the audience through the realistic quality of the stagnant images, conveying that death is reality. Balloons often represent our hopes and dreams. However, like the transient nature of balloons, death is often unpredictable and one’s dreams may never be known or fulfilled. Protruding from the constrictive black voids is the hand of my mother, my sister’s foot and the head of an unidentifiable man. The identity of these significant people in my painting will be forgotten once I die, losing the artwork’s original meaning to audience interpretation.