Nguyen Ba Tuan

Nguyen Ba Tuan was born in 1974 in Ha Nam Province (in the North of Vietnam). He graduated from Hanoi City Stage and Screen University at Faculty of Fine Arts. Ba Tuan’s main source of inspiration is the peaceful village landscape of Vietnam. The familiar images of the rice fields, the boat, the water docks, the thatched roof, the bamboo groves are all retained in his memory, which then recreates on his canvas in various warm and cool colour palettes. Ba Tuan continues to be inspired by the majesty and mystery of nature. He expresses the simplicity and purity  of landscape using rich colour and conventional space to accentuate the form and beauty of the landscape. His work is mostly monochromatic; yellow, red, blue, white or gray tones, with textures and a touch of a different colour to create a contrast that brings all his sceneries to life. In particular, each of his works has a red detail, no matter how small; such as the hood, banana flower, window, roof or a clothesline. The colour red has become the bridge that connects all of his works together. Ba Tuan used to paint freely, but in recent years he completely switched to painting the Northern Delta landscape, where he was born and raised. “The tumultuous childhood, jokes and poverty of a rural area along the Red River – Ha Nam, have given me memories of happiness and sadness. Along with friends of the same age bathing, chasing, fishing, kicking a football, these things have instilled in my work a peaceful, romantic, melancholic atmosphere of the countryside” – Nguyen Ba Tuan