"In the morning, my mother used to take me down to the stream to wash clothes, the sun shining warm and lazy on the backs of our necks and on the gurgling stream. . . .
"At noon, I used to pluck tea leaves, wash them in the stream and then skip barefoot over the hot stones to give them to my mother to toss in the pot. . . .
"At dusk, my playmates and I would look for minnows in the stream, but our gaze was often drawn away by the colorful little pebbles, orange and green and black an d snowy white, below.
We'd stare and stare until the rhythmic dance of the ripples had made us dizzy . . . ."
For Chang Kuan-hao, 33, who grew up in Tungshan Hsiang, Ilan County, nature in his childhood was charged with life and full of flavors, colors, warmth and feeling.
Steeped in the passage of time, his heart pained at the spoiling of nature, his childhood visions became innermost dreams, recurring constantly.
After graduating from Chinese Culture University with a degree in Western painting, Chang worked for eight years in an advertising firm. His "dreams of nature" we re created at this time, when he felt oppressed by urban crowding, by the meretricious packaging and hackneyed creation of advertising work, and wanted to pack it all in. The trackless sand and t he round orb of the moon in an empty sky represent a cloudless, spotless purity, his dreams and goal s of the past thirty years as well as his present state of mind.
From painting to photography--for Chang Kuan-hao, the lens and the b rush are nothing more than a means of freely expressing the aesthetic concepts he has inside. Thanks to the moving emotions of his childhood, combined with his artistic training in college, he has turned the camera lens to realizing his feelings and dreams.
[Picture Caption]
Desert Dream--The beach at Kenting, at the time of the northeast seasonal winds.
Dream of a Brook--Liwu Stream, Hualien, as spring turns into summer.
Rock Dream--Summer at the Northeast Point.
Dream of Green--Autumn in Linkou, Taipei County.
Dream of a Brook--Liwu Stream, Hualien, as spring turns into summer.
Rock Dream--Summer at the Northeast Point.
Dream of Green--Autumn in Linkou, Taipei County.
