This exhibition of ten large-scale paintings by contemporary painter Paul Ching-Bor reveals the artist’s daring exploration of watercolor, while expressing how the contrasting dark and light spirit of life in New York City has inspired him. These haunting images of buildings, bridges, and tunnels are quietly intense in their bleakness. The dark and heavy surfaces interrupted by soft, streaked, or radiant light, in these cityscapes demonstrate how Ching-Bor’s bold and dynamic approach to watercolor defies the naturally delicate and transparent qualities of the medium.
The art of Paul Ching-Bor makes us realize that real talent is indeed a very rare gift. This is an artist who observes the world around him and beautifully alters that world by pulling out and revealing the underlying substance of his subjects. No one can paint the city or capture its energy as remarkably as Paul Ching-Bor. The structures which define the city, its bridges and its buildings, in the hands of this extraordinary painter, possess a singular beauty. Perhaps one reason for his success is that he engages the viewer to be a part of his process by tempting us to navigate through the ethereal nature of the work, very much like that of the nineteenth-century wizard, George Inness.