And here are the questions:
1,Which artist is your favorite? and which food do you like the best?
Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt and he American Photorealists from Louis K. Meisel's first book Photorealism. When I saw those very contemporary but skilled works in oil it was the click and justifies combining my traditional oiltechnique with nowadays and common subjects. Richard Estes because of his architectural wideness, Ralph Goings because of his more intitimate interiours and stilllives and Charles Bell of his spectacular blow-ups from little, colourfull, daily things children like. And of course, Tom Blackwell and Don Eddy made like me reflections to paint and Ben Schonzeit makes love me the abstraction of stillive on large scale.
French Fries I like best!!
2,When did you start to paint the food? why do you choose the food to be the subjects of your paintings?
I started doing food in 1997. The ordinary subject that food is comes along with my desire to show people their own common world.
If any message, I can bring it better this way. I love to show people light and dark, metaphores which can be seen in all my paintings. And I like to show beauty in its purity. There is no beauty without a beast, so irregularity is important to me too. All those aspects can be find in (fast)food from which temptation is actually the most important quality. To induce people to buy my images needs temptational work!
3,When you paint the food , you usually stay hungry, or eat your fill?
I am not getting hungry by painting food. The meaning of a painted surface nevertheless the subject, is something totally different than the meaning of food itself. There is not the tiniest moment of hungryness otherwise it would be torturing the whole time!
4,How much time do you spent on each of your paintings? and which food repeatedly appeared in all of your paintings?
The large works take months, smaller workes take weeks. I frequently paint sandwiches, salad, fries, pastries and hamburgers,
5,Usually, you will enlarge the food how many times in your canvas? and your most usual color is?
Depending on the scale of the painting I enlarge 4 - 15 times!!
6,The food you paint , do you cook them all by yourself?
Yes,
I make all the sandwiches, salads and so one myself, I organize a composition with all kinds of ingredients, like an architect designs his building. I only do not make the pastries myself and it takes a long time to find the right one because of that!
7,Will you post your every painting on Facebook? just like the the others post the food photos on Instagram?
Yes, I like posting new works because of the reactions of people all over the world, it is a beautiful possibillity to hear what they think and (dis)likeOf course I like the huge attention too.
8,Do you take photos of the food before you eat? why do you post the process and paintings on your Facebook?
To me photography is my sketchbook and it helps me to zoom in and to recenter. My paintings start were the photograph ends. I want to add a new dimension, making new choices, reorganise photographic pieces and of course giving the work the brilliance of glazed layers of oil which allways gives the image far more depht and timelessness than a print or an airbrushed painting in acrylic ever could do.
Sometimes I show the painting process on Facebook because I want to make the process understandable. Nevertheless people still don't understand and the mystery gets even bigger! I like to surprise.
9,When you finish the painting, will you feel like you just "immortalize the food"?
Yes, a interesting statement. This painted food will survive itsself and me defenitely and I don't know how it will show off in the far future. This is really getting one of the last questions in my career.
10,Do you believe food have it's own soul? you said that "I hope my paintings will allow the viewer to re-experience reality, to re-discover the essence of the thing that has become so ordinary from its DNA to the level of universal structure, in all its beauty", so what's the difference between the food and the food in your paintings? and what's the difference between the food in photos and the food in your paintings?
I never thought of that. It is a person's intention to make and use food, he lays the soul in it as I do it by painting it.
I hope the spectator is aware of the difference between a photo and painting. A photo arises finally purely mecanical , the painting is handicrafted and analogue, a direct product of the body without interference of a machine.I think this has far more power.
11,You used to say that your inspiration comes to you "when I get naked and take long hot showers.”so your inspiration comes from hot shower but not the food?
I know, The Sun, that was just a silly headline the needed. The idea to tell something new with something ordinary feeds my inspiration. Making the set-up, arranging the ingredients and taking photographs gives the main inspiration.
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12,Will you eat the food when you are painting them?
No, after taking photo's I do sometimes.
13,Do you agree that"sensational food is an art form"? can you find the " artistry and architecture" behind every skilfully-arranged plate?
Oh, sure, a masterchef puts his soul in his foodcreation like an architect or composer or painter. In a way it is more like theatre, to enjoy shortly and instant. Paintings need to be enjoyed by time.
14,Hyperrealism has its roots in the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, ”the simulation of something which never really existed."so ,are the food in your paintings really existed? or they are just false reality?
For 70% the image you finally see being the painting was a photographed reality. The other 30% is made up and added making it a whole new reality actually. Of course any painting is false reality, like Rene Magritte said: 'this is not a pipe (sandwich)', but an image of it!!
15,In your mind, the food's beautiful is coming from? Are you calling yourself a foodie?
Oh no, I am not a foodie, contradictional isn't it!? I am absolutely not interested in any form of sophisticated food.Question 2 explains why I paint food.
Perhaps I will discover and come up with a new subject next year!
And my email address is dadalotus@gmail.com, looking forward for your reply:)
Sincerely
Yu Chin