JUDY GEE

Emoji Donut Addiction

Oil on canvas 100cm x 100cm

18

Donuts

Using saturated colors, high gloss contrast, bright happy donuts are an intentional visual contradiction to our darker compulsions. Underneath our superficial, glossy facades, we sometimes hide anxiety, stresses, and internal pressure. It interrogates our dysfunctions masked as success confronting uncomfortable truths about desire, power and control. Perhaps by confronting our shadows, art can transform critique and self reflection into much needed healing, setting us on a path of transcendence. They are meant to offer a space for reflection served on a colorful, and easily digestible visual vehicle. This series began in 2015 with a question: What does temptation look like? Temptation is glossy, beautiful, seductive, indulgent, sometimes ooey gooey and messy, like a donut. This is the moment of choice, clean and unbitten, no crumbs and still intact. Our life is nothing but a collection of choices. But left unchecked, temptation can morph into addiction, manifesting as greed, vanity, or violence. But where does this stem from? The endless cycle of overworking, overexersizing, over scheduling, over giving, over loving, over exerting, over doing. Beneath it all lies a struggle of "not-enoughness", a restless search for validation, which behavioural science implies the root cause is an imbalance of self-worth and self-love. From this inquiry, the porcelain-themed donuts emerged. Their paradox, Chinese motifs on a Western form, reflects my own identity struggles: belonging everywhere and nowhere. Raised in Taiwan and the US, my formative years were split between cultures, leaving me questioning belonging and feelings of not enoughness. Culture and conditioning shape identity, yet I seek a world that embraces difference rather than division. Through reflection, we transform, crystallizing into something more authentic, more beautiful, more true and perhaps more honest.

Swimmer 1

Oil on canvas 92cm x 62cm

36

Hong Kong

Hong Kong ranks as a top tier global financial city, yet from the city center you can be in the ocean in 15 minutes. These works celebrate Hong Kong's Open Water swimming community while showing a side beyond its iconic skyline. This series was born out of my love of open water swimming. I spent nearly a year documenting my own open water swims, HK's local open water swimmers and scenery. Painted from the perspective of a swimmer, I wanted the viewer to feel as if you are in the ocean feeling the splash, the currents, while capturing the views of our beloved repulse bay. The iconic Hong Kong lifeguard towers greet us before and after our swims, watching over our bags and belongings as we are out in the bay. The blue and yellow cans in the ocean are unique to Hong Kong with both English and Chinese warnings. They are used as markers for open water swimmers to regroup in the ocean or to measure distances. There are few things I can think of more beautiful than witnessing the sun rise over the mountains at 6am and watching the sunlight dance and glisten on the water while swimming in the ocean before starting your day. Sky, Mountain, Water. Every swim is different because the conditions constantly change. Some days are dark and stormy where you know there will be swells and chop and it will be a more challenging swim. Other days can be calm and flat, glass water where you glide through the water like silk. My color palette is saturated, with strong contrasts to convey a sense of movement and the shifting light conditions on the water, differentiating the surface of the water, the depth of the water, as well as foreground and background. The varying blues convey the sense of early morning light, the 6am light, when you are about to enter the water to be greeted by the sunrise. The splashes are painted with a mix of control and randomness. Some parts of the splash employ a splatter technique, while other areas are heavily layered and painted with controlled intention.

Little Girl and Ice Cream Truck

Oil on canvas 46cm x 55cm

39

Hong Kong

We have no control on where we were born or how we were raised, but it inevitably dictates how the world perceives and labels us. How people see us from the outside sometimes contradicts how we feel inside. Early surroundings influence our understanding or lack of understanding of the world, but it doesn't necessarily dictate where we are going. Making a decision to leave what you know to the unknown is a brave and difficult one that comes with a lot of invisible baggage. To belong everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Belonging is state of mind. The "Mister Softee" truck is a nostalgic Hong Kong icon evoking a feeling of summertime and innocence. Children in Hong Kong represent a beautiful love and openness about cross cultural dialogue and appreciation. The city's seamless combination of cultures, old and new side by side, have survived and exists in a very divided world.

Hong Kong Unmasked: 2019 Newsstand

Oil on canvas 120cm x 120cm

42

Hong Kong

In HK, these traditional news stands have survived through all the glass and steel going up around them. But with social media, newspapers are obsolete before they even hit the news stands. "News" can be republished/retweeted/reposted so quickly, the reliability of news has come into question. News seems to be morphing into loose facts + opinion = truth. Where does the responsibility lie in information or disinformation? The reader or the publisher?

Monogram Mao

Acrylic on canvas 100cm x 80cm

48

Works on Paper

I lived in Shanghai from 2006-2015. I witnessed a major shift of unthinkable spending power. Luxury goods were flying out of stores. The higher the price, the more extravagant, the quicker they sold. This was 2 years prior to the crash in 2008. I heard stories of people buying "walls of bags" at Louis Vuitton. So that's about 30 bags in one purchase. It got me questioning...Who's controlling who? How is the "true value" being determined? What is the relationship between consumerism and modern communism? It seems this is power based. I found the dynamic fascinating. Who holds the true power in these relationships seems to be ever changing. Like most areas in life, power is on a sliding scale.