By Gloria Leung
“Value is the interplay between light and dark or black and white. And when you use charcoal, the entire image is purely based on value alone, which is great. Value-based artworks are very appealing,”
Huon Kane, the 29-year-old Meanjin/Brisbane-based classical artist, takes imagery to another plane with realistic depictions and the pursuit of ideological representations.
Huon discovered his distinct skill sets—creative painting and computer programming—in university while studying for a Bachelor of Information Technology at the Queensland University of Technology.
His electronic art productions can be found at the Gallery of Modern Art, where he works as a full-time AV technician. Living in his utopia, Houn is fascinated by capturing symbolic and conceptual appeal in his artwork.
“I want to espouse certain kinds of political views generally when I create paintings. I’m passionate about kind of just political ideologies,” he said.
As a visual artist and oil painter, Huon has earned recognition in the industry, such as the latest 2023 Emerging Artist Award in the Brisbane Portrait Prize for the piece Smoko, which aims to embrace mental health awareness.
His mural for the Brisbane Street Art Festival 2023, “Self/ Love in Bloom”, denotes the identity and platonic love in the Queer Community on 96 Albert Street, right in the centre of Brisbane city.
Yet, the humble and sophisticated artist always finds ways to improve in all aspects of art. Behind the detailed and technical oil paintings, Huon only started to explore colours during the COVID pandemic. He said it was a huge challenge, considering he had mainly done
black-and-white sketches since childhood. To achieve accuracy and conceptuality, Huon generally works six hours a day and finishes each work in two to three months.
“So first, you must create an image in your mind of the image you want to produce. “Then the technical part of the creative process, of creating the artwork, is how do I
physically transpose the images to my mind onto the canvas, and that is a very much more
technical process,” he said.
After years of immersive sketching, drawing, and painting, the visual artist found another interest a few years ago, which has since become a side business—hiring out retro television sets.
Houn said as a visual artist, oil painter, and video artist, he always looks for interesting ways to present images in different forms and filters. He hired retro 90s television sets for live music events, videos, photo shoots, weddings, and even funerals.
The uniqueness of retro 90s television, such as the different interesting convergence properties on a CRT screen, provides a warmer textile and graph with a holographic effect. The 3D shapes and pixels of the 90s anime shown on the CRT screen intrigue him in a way that makes the edges of the characters' shapes clearer and the colour contrast deeper.
“The image that is produced from a retro gaming console was intended to be viewed on a CRT screen. And often you know people don't like playing on one screen because of the way that LCD screen converts the signal into images. It's viewed as unappealing,” he said.
Unlike the much more lighthearted video art Huon produces, his paintings represent his deeply held philosophical concepts, questions about human nature, and curiosity about mastering colours. He often references art from the Renaissance era, such as human portraits that visually translated human nature and emotionally grasped audiences’ attention.
Huon’s friend, Katherine Viney, who is also a muralist, artist, and designer, paints animals, especially ducks.
They met in May 2023 at the Brisbane Street Art Festival, where they were painting next to each other. Katherine said his artwork speaks to his personality as a nonchalant, grounded artist.
“They (the organiser) provide you with all these paints,”
“It's like the stock standard paint that most muralists use. He tried it and was just like, nah I don't like this. So he got his, he brought his own paint along, and it was just like school-grade bullet acrylic. And I saw that, and I was like, okay, that's my guy,” she said.
Katherine said Huon’s dedication is what sets him apart.
“I was like, can we hang out? And he was like, no no no, not for the next nine months. I'm painting.”
Their artworks take different approaches. Nevertheless, they often share their honest opinions and methodologies. Katherine said she wouldn’t have fully taken her plan through fruition in some of her artworks without Huon’s support.
In the future, Huon wishes to expand his retro television pop-hire job. Although he said he has not been able to envisage uniting video art and painting, his relentless pursuit of pushing boundaries will only bring him endless opportunities to explore his way to bridge the old and new.
This article is published in the Qut Glass Magazine, Issue 18: Winter Edition (2024): https://www.qutglass.com/issue-18-winter-edition/
Comments