The Hues of Land and Sky

Lotus Gallery is pleased to present The Hues of Land and Sky, an exhibition bringing together a selection of works by Mai San created between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Rather than treating culture as an object of study, she presents it as something lived and shared, woven into the relationships between people, place, tradition, and belief. It is these connections that the exhibition seeks to explore.

From this perspective, the exhibition unfolds through four chapters: Clouds Upon the Peak, Of Grace and Beauty, Along Rivers and Wharves, and Roads Toward the Sacred. Together, they trace four interwoven elements that shape cultural identity: land, people, customs, and belief.

Through ink and gouache on paper, Mai San recorded the places, people, and moments she encountered throughout decades of travel. Quick-drying, versatile, and well suited to direct sketching, these materials allowed her to capture scenes as they unfolded.

In her hands, paper, ink, and color became a means of preserving observations and experiences gathered over many years on the road. Each work reads like a visual diary of places visited, people encountered, and moments remembered. These impressions are conveyed through bold, flat planes of color, where vermilion reds, indigo blues, vibrant greens, and luminous yellows often appear side by side with striking intensity.

Rather than pursuing strict naturalism, Mai San uses color expressively, allowing memory and emotion to guide her interpretation of a scene. As a result, the villages, markets, riverbanks, and celebrations that populate her paintings are animated by a sense of vitality and collective spirit.