For Helene of Vietnam, art is life
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When she first stopped by Vietnam 17 years ago during a quick business trip, Helene Kling had had no idea she would stay this long and grow attached to this strange country.
In her villa at the high end Thao Dien residential area, the Frenchwoman brightens up every little corner with her paintings of Vietnam.
Ever since falling in love with Saigon or the old ‘Paris of the Orient’ from her first encounter in 1994, she has taken up painting and been living by the art.
“It was a very different Saigon back then, with fewer bikes, and a slower pace of life,” Helene spoke of her first impression.
“The economy was still difficult then, but I was so drawn to the city’s Asian and classic French style fusion,”
Twenty years later, Saigon now dons a different cloak; with so many sweeping changes it can confuse even the most native of Saigonese.
To Helene, a painter whose arts often feature femininity as a recurring theme, Vietnamese women is a source and a powerful example of the country’s drastic changes.
What impresses her, the artist, was how fast they broke free from age-old traditions and social expectations to be immersed in modern life.
Yet, just like their mothers and grandmothers, Vietnamese women still shoulder the burden of childcare, care for old parents and family besides their fulltime work.
“No matter how hard they work, they always exude a beauty of strength and selflessness,”
“They can be shy, and gentle, but they always carry within them a boundless energy to live and fight,” Helene said.
Hence, women and their faces, their life have been an endless inspiration for many of Helene’s artworks.
Featured in many solo and group exhibitions, her paintings are not just limited to portraying urban women, they also capture a slice of life in rural areas, where sometimes having enough to eat is a blessing.
An avid traveler herself, Helene used to spend months scouring the country’s most rural highland areas to capture the feminine beauty in such a harsh living.
“Their femininity is not lost to their austere life, but developed into an inner strength so immense and unexpected that goes well beyond their calmness and patience,”
“It is hope and beauty, to me,”
Thus, the women in her paintings are usually portrayed with intense facial expression, each totally different from the next, by very strong and warm colors.
Religion, Buddhism in particular, is another regular in Helen’s works.
She has toured many Buddhist countries from China, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodian and set foot on almost all of Vietnam’s big pagodas.
To Helen, that must be a journey to seek serenity and peacefulness, and to realize the true essence of a Vietnamese’s soul.
In 2007, she published a painting book, called “Dragon Tears”, to share her 10 years in Vietnam where “every tear that fell in happiness, joy or sadness has instantly found expression through my paintings”, she wrote.
A second one, “Art beat for Vietnam” is scheduled to launch this month.
