My Colourful Neighbourhood (我多彩的社区)

JULIANA CHAN

60 x 80 cm

Oil on Canvas

Limited Edition Reproduction on Canvas available.

2018

What defines home for each of us? I have always enjoyed walking on streets and small alleys to see how people live, work and play.

Most of us live in government-subsidized housing and they are most enjoyable to look at. Nothing fancily built, but what makes them interesting is how people use them - they add "colours" to the houses. As I was walking along the neighbourhood, the noises through the common corridor attracted me. What I saw was beautiful. The colours of the flapping clothes hung outside from almost every household unit; the colours of fruits and vegetables sold at the ad-hoc markets; the different "colours" of noises from people at the ground floor selling, buying, bargaining, running and laughing, noises from the activities of cats and birds mingling among the humans. This scene stirred my emotions. Home is not defined by what we live in. Home is where our colours of lifestyle are. Home is where we have the colours of our community.

[This piece was selected as one of the Longlist (top 10%) in Jackson’s Open Painting Prize 2018. See this work in the JOPP 2018 Prize Longlist here.]