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These days I've been revisiting materials about Anita's childhood and her journey to success. While most focuses on the breadth and diversity of her artistic career, I wish to celebrate the depth of her capacity as a performing artist. The best way to explore such, in my opinion, is to look into her performances in the art films. Here I painted her role "Man Lu #曼璐" in one of my favorite films--Eighteen Springs #半生緣. Both my grandma and I loooovvvved her role so much. Being the eldest in a struggling family, we both felt for her for the hardship she has to face simply due to the birth order.
I love this painting so much that I wanna send it to fine-printing, frame it and hang it on my wall.
最近我重溫有關歌后梅艷芳童年和成名的報道。發現大部份的資料均著重她演藝事業的闊度和百變，而我卻想探究她作為一個藝術家的深度。要做到這點，我覺得最好是回顧看她演的文藝片。這次我畫了她在許鞍華執導的《半生緣》內曼璐的角色。我記起祖母在生前和我談起這齣電影，我倆不約而同地說着很愛梅艷芳這個角色。我想這是因為我倆均為貧窮家中的長女，對梅艷芳角色的處境和困惱特別有共鳴。
我非常滿意自己這幅畫作。真的想把它用精細印刷把它打印出來，錶起它，然後掛在家中。

Anita Mui’s series
I’ve been rewatching the film “Rouge” ( #胭脂扣) lately and am totally blown away by Anita’s stellar performance as a gracious ghost who returns to the living world to look for her lover. Here I’ve given her a goddess glow to signify her divine presence, and posed her to glance back to drive home the plot re. her reminiscing about her past with her long lost lover. In this film, Anita proved herself as a born actress whose every glance and turn touches the heart of the audience, as if we were able to breathe a poignant scent of her perfume. Can’t believe Anita was only 25 when she played this role.
It’s taken me almost a week to paint this portrait. I used multiple references to construct her face and pose. Since most online references were of frontal poses of hers, there wasn’t a single reference that could answer the call from my headcanon, and therefore it required a deeper search for multiple references to create a new image not straightly borrowed from the film. Then it took me quite long to composite the background which was a blend of street night scenes in Hong Kong in the 30s and 80s, where the story takes place.
BTW, I handwrote all Chinese texts in this painting, I didn’t use fonts at all 🙂 thanks to my muscles memories that recalled my calligraphy training back in my primary school days.
I hope you like this piece as much as I do.
梅艷芳系列之《#如花回首》
這兩星期，我重看#梅艷芳的代表作《胭脂扣》。觀看時，我特意把聲音關掉，只用視覺去感受梅的每個動作和表情。真的不能不讚嘆這位土生土長的超級巨星在戲中世界級的演技。當時只有25歲的她，自然地流露着凄美的表情，而她在唱粵曲部份也是非常精煉，問誰能媲美？
我用了差不多一星期的時間來繪畫這幅#梅艷芳人像。首先我用了多張圖片來合併這個回望的動作，因為網上能找到的電影圖片主要都是她正面的樣子，但我覺得《胭脂扣》故事的中心是敘述她留戀在世時的愛情，所以回首的姿勢會比較貼題。另外，背景霓虹燈的擺位也費神多時。由於故事分別發生在1930年和1980年的香港，所以我繪畫了夜景和電車，增加真實感。
畫中的中文字全部是我手寫的，不是字體 .
希望你和我一樣都喜歡這幅畫！

All images © Libby Lam 2023, do not use without permission.

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