UNMESHED AND UNDECIPHERABLE: IN CONVERSATION WITH DYLAN NG

Haha, my thesis feels so long ago now. I forget now what the ideas actually felt like, what I was thinking and feeling. I remember painting constantly during that period. I remember my final year of school, I could only think about my family and friends. I think it was coming from a place of gratitude, and having no idea what I wanted to paint at the same time. The most immediate and physical visual and subject I had were the people around me.

I don't think you can really tell from the final result of the painting, but I clung very hard to the reference images I took of my subjects. I think because of my proximity to them in my personal life, but also because in image-making, the stakes feel very high, there is a sense of urgency to visually translate the image onto the canvas, especially when the subject is a person. Maybe I was just impatient, but I felt this immediacy to capture my subjects' likeness in the first or second rounds of painting. I would scrap it the second I lost their gaze or posture, I was rushing to reach the end.

I think painting someone without their knowledge was just the fact that I didn't really show anyone my progress besides my partner while painting my thesis. My parents and brother had no idea what I was painting, I didn't let my friends visit my studio, I kept it very hush-hush. It was quite funny and awesome to see their reactions during the opening.

Painting has always been a practice of responding. Painting will always be a push and pull, an action and then a smart reaction. As I said earlier, I clung very hard to the reference imagery I was using in the beginning of my thesis. But there was this point in each piece where I put down the piece and let the painting guide me. I became more obedient to my mark-making. I came to terms with the fact that I didn't need to paint the whole composition in a similar manner, that it often is more powerful to realize parts of the canvas and leave other parts unfinished. I became more aware of the colors and how they reacted with each other. My economy of brushstrokes became smarter and more sensitive.

Painting will always be a verb. The act of painting will always come before the image. My understanding of painting has changed since I painted those paintings. I care less about image-making than I did before.

Oh, definitely. I'm just getting somewhat comfortable painting smaller. Throughout school I was painting as large as I could go because I was given so much space and time to paint. In New York, I have way less of both, my studio is quite small and I work full time at an art gallery. Painting small was less of a decision and more of a solution. I've come to really enjoy it, though. I do treat painting small and large almost as two different mediums, though. It engages the body and mind very differently, the problem sets are completely different, the way I hold my brush and mix my paint is different. I am looking very differently while I paint. In smaller paintings, each stroke matters a lot more. The economy of marks is smaller, the colors matter more. The physicality of the paint becomes more important. I'm more in my head than in my body.

In larger works, my body moves a lot more, constantly stepping backwards to see the whole image. Strokes become more gestural, there's more immediacy. I have to be more patient with larger works, the surface of the painting takes time to develop. Honestly, working smaller recently has made me forget how to paint larger, or is making me rethink the way I paint on larger surfaces.

It also changes the way people view my work. Both small and large engage the body very differently. There is an intimate and vulnerable closeness with a small painting. Your body naturally moves forward when looking at a small piece, you can see every stroke, every brush hair stuck in the paint. Larger paintings will always be impressive. The 1:1 ratio of a painted body to your own will always make you physically react. The surfaces of my larger works are often more terpenoid and alchemic, which has a different quality to it than my smaller works.

Haha! I never do. The hardest part of a painting is knowing when to stop. One stroke can completely change how the painting reads. Knowing when to call it quits is a skill in itself. I'm still figuring it out.

I think I first started doing it as a tactic to not get so bored with a painting. With multiple subjects in a composition, there is always a place to develop a painting further and a place to come back to. The hierarchy of the piece is easier to establish with multiple figures.

I think I also used it as a way to abstract my work further. I was questioning how to develop space in a painting without resolving the background to read as a physical space. I'm not really interested in space as a place where the body is necessary. I'm more interested in how space is created when bodies come together. I'm interested in these moments of collision and crashing. I think that idea comes out in some paintings more than others, but these moments where bodies and people come together are fascinating. Where does one person end and another continue? In my thesis it was about the subject, the individual as a sole person, now it's less about the individuality of the person and more about the creation of the person. The person I am, the person you are, is a result of the people around you.

I have also been going out to dance a lot, and literally nothing matters on the dance floor besides your body and the way you move in it. Bodies coming together in that moment to experience something together. Under the lights, bodies become unmeshed and undecipherable. How blessed I feel dancing, knowing I can move my body in any way I want. It's been informing a lot of my work, especially my larger work. It goes hand in hand, as larger works are a lot more physically demanding, the reactions and the gestures are almost like dancing in itself.

Right now I only paint in oils. I don't really show my sketches or my acrylic studies, it's not really what I am interested in. The sketches and studies are more just tools to get the result I want, or to test different color relations and to practice a certain gesture or mark that I can't seem to get right.

Perhaps I'm scared to experiment more these days. Time feels very valuable these days. I only have a certain amount of time in the studio because of work and other responsibilities I have. The amount of freedom I have to play and experiment feels limited, even though I know it is not. Right now, I'm at a place where I like to stick to what I know. Also, what I already have the materials for. I've been starting to get into image transfers and interweaving that within paintings. I will keep you posted on how it turns out!

I grew up in New York City. The only time I haven't lived here is when I was in college for four years, and I moved back right after I graduated. It has definitely shaped my art and the people I surround myself with. I think after I graduated, I hit this wall where I didn't really know what I wanted to paint (I still feel this quite often). I realized after a while that I not only had to develop my studio practice but develop my person more. I think NYC really has shaped who I am and how I approach life, and it definitely affects the way I approach my studio practice. I've met people who believe in my work when I didn't believe in it myself, I've met people who have pushed me and my work further, I've met people who make me a better person.

Haha, I have no idea where it is going! I'm just trying to still have fun with it and not put pressure on myself. My only goals are to keep exploring, keep pushing myself, and keep finding new ways to create.