Fossils by Luong Luu Bien

I study people and I study myself
I paint the enduring loneliness of humankind, their efforts to find understanding and intimacy. I paint the anger that I keep inside, my reflections of myself, my thoughts and my meditations. I don’t paint specific people or situations, nor states of mind…, they might be me or they might be you, at some distant point in our existence.
I like to look at people out of time and space, from the front or the back, in a cave or caught up in the jungle of machines that they have created. Along with their pride and their loneliness, they survive feelings of insecurity and ridiculousness of their current existence in the endless flow of time.
They are like fossils viewed billions of years from now, a kind of lonely and unstable fossil of one of the universe’s most noble creatures. I love my work of portraying the inner emotions of separate forms, individuals, silent lonely words, as their separate consciousnesses interact in this world.
For that reason, I want those who view my work to feel a great source of energy from inside each portrait, each body. Each the result of a complex emotional reaction or which might be a potential bringer of great happiness to them.