Current Research

The glaze palette in this work has narrowed.

In the earlier pieces it ran wide — many hues, many tones, a broad spread of brightness. The Eyes of Tà Lài and Hoofbeats of a Southern Sky were made that way. Over the following two years the range contracted toward earth: the browns, ochres and greys of Bán Dùi and Dawn of the Stage. I did not plan this. I noticed it after the fact, looking at the works in sequence.

What I am working on now follows that narrowing further, and out of ceramic alone.

Old Soul, Old Streets is the hinge. It is the first work where oil paint carries most of the surface and the ceramic appears only where the surface needs to break. The question is no longer how much ceramic a work contains. It is whether the ceramic is necessary at all — and in some works it is not.

The narrowing is measurable. Sampling the hue distribution across three works gives a standard deviation of 19.8° in 2023, 15.0° in 2025, and 10.5° in 2026 — the range has contracted by roughly half in three years. The works have also grown darker: the largest single colour area in the 2026 work is a deep brown, where in 2025 it was a mid warm grey-brown.

I am also widening the material itself: ceramic from sources other than Biên Hòa, sediment, and fragments collected rather than made. Each piece keeps whatever history it arrived with. I am using them as units of memory rather than as units of colour.

This page is a record of work in progress. It is not finished, and some of what is here will not survive.

The studio in Biên Hòa is being rebuilt, and will not be ready for some months. Until then this work continues in a temporary space.