I first watched Dinh Quan’s paintings in 1993. The artist’s work has its own specific features. On the one hand, the eye takes delight in admiring luscious, graceful women’s figures until it seems to have been replete with excessive pleasure - for women are always the focus that directly attracts, interprets and connects the viewers’ associations in which the space and motives of ancient communal houses and pagodas urge and recall an equally real and illusory world. That is poetry. On the other hand, Dinh Quan reveals his ego in a dim, dreamy and fragile contour that he himself is not fully aware of.

I have known Dinh Quan for more than a year. His work remains consistent and easily identified, but he is determined to break it up and denies his presence once he has stamped his originality on it. This is not a courageous action. It is an advantage, especially when he is consciously looking for himself and has found it. To understand and to be able to do this, the artist is willing to pay a price.

In this transitional period, figures and shapes in Quan’s paintings loose their integrity, they are broken off and smashed into smithereens. Yet, on the contrary and quite in reverse, there is some mental convergence in the errant life of the personages towards a fantastic land. The ghastly, frigid call does not resound from eyes or other emitting objects; direct, violent emotion is imposed on the artwork as a whole. Quan’s paintings currently contain the polyhedral and sophisticated powers of knowledge which harmoniously exist in the state of infatuation and frenzied zeal. Elsewhere in various parts, it is the yell from the fathomless bottom of the mind.

Quan feels all the more lonely the moment he is more humanistic. Having mastered the traditional lacquer painting method and technique, Quan’s art now integrates into the supernatural beauty of lacquer media.

Dinh Quan’s paintings have been sublimated, viewed from this superiority. Only a few artists have got the same internal power as his.

A New Stage in Dinh Quan’s Art

A few years ago on my trip to Hanoi, I had an occasion to view Dinh Quan’s paintings in his joint exhibition with other painters, such as Quoc Hoi, Pham Ngoc Minh, Quang Huy and Tran Quoc Tuan. Each artist had his own peculiar way of painting, but they all showed a powerful strength of creativeness, novelty and no overlapping. Separately speaking inside the smoothness and lustre of Dinh Quan’s lacquer paintings, there exists a concealed, mysterious distinctive feature of the media as well as their poetic inspiration. These are precisely – as he put it – the reminiscences of his childhood with images of festive days in villages and communal houses of familiar beasts and objects of the country side. Female figures – which are well finished and beautifully refined, surrealist rather than realistic – always occupy a central position in his paintings. They are no doubt images stemming from the status of Guan Yin of the one thousand arm - and one thousand eyes – Buddhas in ancient pagodas. Banners and streamers are also indispensable elements in Quan’s art.

They are memories of old legends which he already heard in his infancy. Generally speaking, the pictures of Dinh Quan at that time are submerged in his close connections with the past, the great history of our nation and his own past experiences. Hence, they simultaneously arouse the great excitement of festivities and inspire the melancholic quietness of a Zen priest.

In my recent trip to Hanoi, Dinh Quan showed me a series of his novel paintings, novel in the proper meaning of the word. In fact, they are new in terms of time, the way of expression, the main idea, the composition and the content. Though the stream of creativity remains the same, hardly does Dinh Quan borrow his motives from national cultural life or ornamental designs in communal houses or Buddhist temples. And even when the borrowings do exist, they are quite insignificant, since those external elements have already been metamorphosed into a modern outward look and ambience. Today’s atmosphere is now vigorous and definite with neither idle talks nor far-fetched politeness. The images once given special care and were duly polished up, now seems to explode and disintegrate into emotional, expressive images. ‘Sacred songs’, ‘Loves’ and ‘Moons’ are no more viewed in a romantic dream, like manner or executed by a gentle meticulous hand. They apparently appear on the lacquer background in the author’s sudden inspiration prompted by a fit of anger or a moment of despair. It seems as if the personages would like to let out a cry prior to their self-explosion. Nevertheless, self-destruction and this should be born in mind, is merely a way of self-expression which man can use to raise questions to himself to get rid of the many sorrows and worries, and to sublimate his own sufferings.

The view of Dinh Quan’s new paintings give the feeling that we are in closer contact with the author himself because they are simple, free from preciousness, and they are not trying to fill our eyes with technicalities. Quan is more and more the master of lacquer painting and gets more effective command of its technique which accordingly gives him enough freedom and power in his artistic creativity.

Constantly searching in order to surpass oneself, that is a quality and a necessity for an artist. Dinh Quan is exactly an artist who is qualified as such.