A Vietnamese war veteran and artist has used banana bark to make awesome paintings for over 30 years.

Van Dac, of the central province of Quang Binh, has perfected the art of using banana plant bark to create paintings, a technique he invented when he was a soldier in the 1970s.

“One day, when I was resting on a hammock, looking leisurely at banana plants which were faded and dried, the idea of using their bark to make paintings suddenly flashed in my mind,” Dac recalled.

“The beautiful colors of the bark looked amazing.”

When he first began creating banana bark artwork, his pieces decorated military tents and accompanied his comrades onto the battlefields of Truong Son Forest in Vietnam’s central region.

Hundreds of unique paintings have now traveled to all corners of the country and around the world.

Quang Binh provincial People’s Committee has been a loyal dient for years, ordering the special products to give as gifts to international delegations to the province.

Dac also regularly receives foreign guests at his house to admire his art.

A Taiwanese tourist, who bought a painting titled Duong mon tren bien(The track on the beach),said she liked the piece not only because it was made of a special material but also because she liked how the painter expressed Vietnam’s difficult past and his love for his homeland.

Lifetime creation

Dac said the greatest challenge when creating a painting was selecting the bark, which must be dried naturally.

Each section of bark must be the correct color and size for the subject of Dac’s creation.

The bark’s natural beauty - without any enhancements - becomes part of the painting.

“The bark must be trimmed and grafted together and then pasted onto a wooden board,” Dac said.

“The veins of the bark look similar to those of wood.”

“The paintings have great durability. Many created 30 years ago still retain their original color,” Dac said.

He said the barks’ colors were best used to depict either dynamic or fierce scenes.

For instance, he said, “The 85 cm by 100 cm Duong mon tren bien(The track on the beach) features the deadly combat between an American warplane and Vietnamese military transport ship No. 125 during the Vietnam War.”

The piece won an award at Da Nang City’s “Armed Forces and Revolutionary War for the National Establishment and Defense” fine arts exhibition in 2002.

However, some of Dac’s paintings, such as Chu meo va canh hoa roi (The cat and falling flower petals), Ven bien Nhat Le (Nhat Le Seacoast), highlight his home town’s peaceful and smooth landscapes.

While nurturing an ambition to open a gallery where he can promote his unique work to both international and local art lovers, Dac has been experimenting with a more difficult project - making portraits.

“It is an extremely difficult task but I believe the determination and patience I learnt as a wartime soldier will help me succeed,” Dac said.

Source: Tuoi Tre

   
(Copy Thanhniennews)