Vietnam Travel > Travel Special Features > Vietnam - Finding a muse

Vietnam - Finding a muse

1 2

Quite naturally, I began to paint them. Through these women I could see my childhood. Life in their small houses was just like my own back home, without material wealth but spiritually rich. Some of these women reminded me of my mother who fought courageously for better conditions. I could sense that they had suffered like my mother did, with secret resignation.

I was greatly moved when I met Phuong, a flower vendor in the Kim Lien district of Hanoi. With slow, precise and elegant movements she arranged flowers in a basket on her bicycle. Where is she from? The countryside? Yes, far away. She smiled shyly. She was beautiful.

At the Alliance Francaise in Hanoi a student attracted my attention with her dedication to learn. She let me sketch her as she went about her work. She was preoccupied with her studies and her future.

Hue is a melancholy city, a city of painters, poets and musicians. With its gardens of cherry, frangipani and royal Poinciana, it was the imperial city of the Nguyen Dynasty. Here, I met a mother who, widowed a few weeks earlier, lived on a boat with her nine children. She cared for her family by night and worked as a tourist guide in imperial tombs by day. Her eldest son piloted the boat while she prepared a meal for tourists. From time to time she stopped to push the boat when it got stuck in the mud. I watched her with her younger children and an older lady. It is impossible to describe the elegance with which she set out the food, laying bowls and chopsticks on the deck of the boat.

Near Ben Nghe River I met a cyclo driver and his wife. She invited me into their small wooden house over the water. It must be very cool during the monsoon season. It didn't seem to matter; they loved each other and were happy. She smiled, holding their child in her arms. We entered the single, small room, a bike in one corner, mats hanging up, pans and bowls carefully arranged on the ground. I often think of them. For Christmas 200 I painted a watercolor of the nativity from sketches I made here.

In Sapa, I saw H'mong, Thai and Dao people. What diversity! What clothing! Indigos and reds, an entire palette of colors! At Bac Ha Market a young H'mong woman have me her basket as if we were old friends. In exchange I let her choose one of my shawls in which to carry her baby. What a marvelous exchange!

How can I express all this? It's in the paintings that the feelings, colors and impressions come to me. I feel at peace when painting the people I met in Vietnam. May be I feel a little nostalgic when I think about how the country might change. Vietnam is always changing, opening up to frantic modernization. How will it be possible to preserve Vietnam's tradition?

We've been back to Vietnam three times and I've met many other Vietnamese women. The way I look at them has changed since that first day in 1999. A picture points a thousand words; painting in my life.

< Back

1 2