Paintings and Drawings by Esther Chow: A Fresh Encounter on Leafy Tung St.

Looking for a respite from the high urban energy of Hong Kong? Love how nature expresses herself in the color and shapes of flowers? If so, make your way over to charming and leafy Tung Street in Sheung Wan and head to the classic but modern building that is #42. There, in a quiet gallery space with white walls and tall windows as a backdrop, you will find the wonderous A Fresh Encounter flower paintings by Hong Kong-based artist Esther Chow.

Esther, an award-winning, personally approachable artist, who earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago, has exhibited her work in the USA, Europe, and Asia, including at the London, Hong Kong, and Singapore Affordable Art Fairs. She is also an art instructor — she was the artist in residence at Yew Chung International School in Shanghai and currently is the Visual Arts teacher at the American School Hong Kong in Tai Po. 

In A Fresh Encounter, Esther shares her love of both flowers and fabrics. She created all but one of the exhibit's 16 pieces when she was in the US, buying the flowers at local markets and the fabrics at popular US retail store JOANN Fabrics.

Esther describes many of the exhibit’s paintings as “deconstructed still lifes.” Rather than painting flowers in a vase, which she also does beautifully in an Impressionist-era style, in these "deconstructed still lifes," she paints flowers scattered across fabric-covered surfaces. In a process similar to what she uses when creating her plein air paintings, Esther would begin with a sketch to help her understand what she was seeing. Next, she would paint the flowers — time being an enemy in this process because of course the blooms would fade, and then finally, she would paint in the background fabric.

All of the deconstructed paintings overflow with color. In Flowers #14 Gladiolus on Lotus, her choice of palette, her use of light, and the composition she creates with the live flowers evoke an earlier era. In Flowers #17 Peony on Chintz, the fabric is the actual canvas — the flowers are painted directly on it. Flowers #18 is a creation from Esther’s recent trip to Thailand. She actually brought the JOANN fabric with her because she knew she wanted to paint flowers from the wonderful Thai flower markets. The first painting she ever created in this series, Flowers #1, is also on exhibit and features bold yellow, orange, and purple blossoms on a delightfully rich, blue background fabric.

There are also more traditional paintings of flowers. To create the small painting Refuge, Esther folded flowered fabrics into a box. The softness of the fabrics is palpable and the composition reminds the viewer of Matisse’s love for floral patterns and his affection for Asian influences. In Love from Texas, she recreates a bridesmaid’s bouquet from a college friend’s wedding.

Also featured in this exhibit are Esther’s ink on paper sketches of some of the flowers she had used in the paintings, but these sketches capture the flowers in the natural process of drying. Her technique and composition in these are reminiscent of academic botanical studies.

Not to be missed is her striking enlargement of her original painting. Flowers #6, for which she won the 2011 Nippon Steel U.S.A., Inc./ School of the Art Institute of Chicago Presidential Award. Here, using pen on printmaking paper, Esther has transformed the painting into a sketch composition that is more than 2 meters in size.

The exhibit is open daily through May 20 from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Esther is usually there Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons as well as on weekends and is happy to talk about her creative process. If you can’t make it to the exhibit, you have another chance to see (and purchase) these works at the HK Affordable Art Fair, May 22-25 at the HKCEC, at the Art Current Gallery Stand No. C06.