This countryman becomes very much attached to his native village indeed. The view of his paintings betrays his being mad with love. Truly, it is hard to sever the predestined love relationships with those village young women who got involved with him willingly though precariously.

Experimenting Buddha’s teachings, he improves himself by earning a meager living. Knowing how to be self-sufficient yet still being tortured by the daily questions, Hoang Bach Diep, judiciously let himself indulged in endless dreams. He lives and draws pictures as innocently as a child who is humming pastoral songs amongst leaves, fish, birds, and flowers. His kindheartedness could be compared to a lotus leaf which is evergreen throughout the four seasons. Sensual by nature, he could not resist the temptation of amorous dreams as those described in Pu Sung Ling’s stories, to such a degree that even grass and flowers are tormented with envy as their blue does not mature in time to compete with the fresh, tender colour in each of his paintings that unexpectedly brightens. Though being unacquainted with one another, his women are quite similar in their longing for him in vain, year in year out.

With Hoang Bach Diep, to paint seems to disclose to someone regrets of the usual in ordinary life, non-ceremonious desires and also vague and faded memories on a gloomy late afternoon when the artist feels himself incapable of seeking a point of support in his picture.

Thus, figures and colours seem not to match the overflowing feelings this man devotes to women, children and nature, and God knows who could understand him perfectly…

Hanoi, August 2001

Art critic Luong Xuan Doan