Home Away from Home
by Summer Lu
2020, Oil and gouache on canvas
Summer’s artwork celebrates themes of identities, memories, and nostalgia. She portrays objects and places that are significant in her life, and by manipulating colours she captures fleeting moments that would otherwise have gone by.
This image is an overhead shot of someone cooking a pancake. The countertop is yellow with a stovetop with four burners cut off slightly by the top right corner of the frame. The person is cooking the pancake over the bottom left burner in a black, round frying pan. They hold the frying pan’s handle with their left hand and begin to flip the pancake with a wooden spoon in their right hand. The pancake is round and centered in the pan. It is a deep brown with round, yellow buttery patches, and a light cream edge.
The stovetop is silver with open flames and four round dials in a horizontal line in the bottom right corner. The burners consist of black square grates that surround each burner. The grates point inwards towards the burners from the four corners of each grate. There is the corner of a white square plate in the top left of the image, and in the left edge of the frame, you can see the top of half a glass of water.
An overhead shot of someone cooking a pancake over top of a stove.
In the second image, you see the full view of the woman with black, straight hair just below her shoulders and brown eyes cooking in her kitchen. She wears a lilac t-shirt with a teal apron wrapped around her waist to just below her knees. She flips the pancake in her left hand and holds the wooden spoon in her right. The counters are flat against the back until the middle of the image. In the middle, they meet a corner and angle towards the bottom right of the frame. The stove and oven lay in the middle of the counter, and the woman stands in front of them. Next to the stove on the right, the ingredients for the pancake include salt, sugar in a clear jar, a cup, syrup, and a few leftover berries. Half of the sink is in view before it gets cut off by the bottom edge of the painting’s frame.
On the back counters is a jar of utensils with a chopping board in front of it with oranges, peppers, and eggs on top. There is a toaster oven in the corner with a plant and a pink mug sitting on the top. You can see the bottom half of the top cupboards along the top side of the frame, and on the left side of the frame, you can see the edge of a long cupboard door. Between all the cupboards, white tiles cover the walls.
A self-portrait of the artist in her kitchen flipping a pancake over the stove with the ingredients surrounding her.
Reminiscing
“This series of artworks depicts my mother’s garden. I painted these while I was away in Vancouver. My family are painters. My grandfather used to paint on silk as his profession. My mother and I both inherited his love for nature and his skills to paint them. Whenever I paint flowers I think of home. This is my escape to a safe place. ”
In the background, a purple fence takes up a third of the frame, with a pink lattice fence on top. A light blue door with three glass panels makes up the left side of the background.
A dark green wooden chair sits in the bottom left corner with a dark blue cushion with leaves on the front sitting on the chair. Next to the chair, many pink flowers take up the rest of the bottom of the frame. They have pink petals with orangy yellow highlights. The bunch makes a triangular shape with one large flower at the bottom and three flowers making both the corners at the top. Dark green leaves surround the bottom two sides of the flowers, and a trail of leaves follow a branch from the top side of the flowers to the top of the frame over the solid purple fence in the background.
A bunch of pink flowers in the artist's garden.
The corner of a coffee table pokes up from the middle of the bottom side of the painting. The top of the table looks like glass with slight reflections seen in the top, and a magenta fern-like plant sits in a blue pot with a brown rim on the coffee table. Aligned with the right side of the table's corner is a yellow, gold folding chair. The chair's back is round with a vine pattern connecting the outer edge to the crosshatched centre, and the seat is a mosaic made out of cream brown and blue horizontal diamond shapes. The chair on the left side of the table is the edge of a couch with a blue frame and pinky cream cushions.
The background is the outside wall of a house made of dark blue horizontal panels with a silver star with a white star in the middle hanging on the right side. Against the wall is a slim decorative table. Two birdhouses sit on the table right next to each other. The birdhouse on the left is taller, with large openings on each wall. The smaller house on the right has four small windows at the front and solid walls. There is a tall, grassy plant next to each birdhouse and a small dark brown box in front of them with a rounded lid.
A painting of the artist's garden with birdhouses and a seating area.
Summer Lu is a visual artist and a painter. Her main mediums are oil and watercolour/gouache. She graduated from Emily Carr University with a Bachelor in Visual Arts. For the past four years she has been studying and painting in Canada, and currently works in Shanghai, China. Her love for nature, specifically botanical art has drawn her to collaborate with Bear’s Bloom. Working with colours brings her joy and peace, as they are able to communicate sensations and feelings which words can not.