Studio Visit with Eddie Lui

In conjunction with Hong Kong painter and sculptor Eddie Lui’s exhibition at UMAG, the Museum Society is delighted to organize an afternoon tea with Eddie at the his studio.

In the early 1970s, Lui completed an art and design course with the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at The University of Hong Kong (now HKU SPACE), before he studied a one-year contemporary ink painting programme with Hong Kong ink painters Lui Shou-kwan (1919–1975), Wucius Wong (b. 1936), and others. Since then, Lui has developed his own individual style, displayed his deeply felt admiration for nature, and created a new language of naturalistic as well as abstract motifs. As a draftsman, painter and sculptor—Lui is one of the founders of contemporary art in Hong Kong.

Inspired by the naturalism of America-born painter Georgia O’Keefe (1887–1986) as well as steeped in the tradition of Chinese bird-and-flower painters, Lui depicts exotic fruit and vegetables full of life and symbolism. His artworks, whether in ink, gouache, Japanese handmade paper on canvas, or sculpted in clay, are reminiscent of poetry that connects us humans with nature and appeals to our senses.

Over the years, Lui’s palette changed and the often bright and flamboyant colours gave way to more muted monochrome ink. At the same time, in artworks large and small, the fine execution of each detail and the certainty with which the artist’s brush moves remain of the highest quality. A generation younger than his master Lui Shoukwan and other influential ink painters, such as Hon Chi Fun (b. 1922) and Liu Kuosung (b. 1932), Lui himself became a gifted teacher who instructed students and helped develop New Ink Painting as a discipline.