HÀ NỘI — Female artist Trần Ngân Giang from the central province of Hà Tĩnh opened her first solo exhibition in downtown Hà Nội to express her passion for painting.

Titled Đất Mới (New Lands), the event gathers nearly 20 paintings that Giang has created over two years. The artworks include acrylic and oil-on-canvas. Most of her works feature beautiful scenes of dawn, sunsets over countryside, bamboo forests and smoke rising from rural cottages.

Born in 1985, she was originally trained in healthcare and now works as a public relations officer at a hospital in Hà Nội. Despite a heavy workload, Giang uses her free time to paint.

Giang had a difficult upbringing without the presence of her mother. She used to wait for her father to return after long business trips.

“Now I draw all my memories of childhood with beautiful moments in the countryside,” she told Việt Nam News. “I was lucky one day to meet my teacher, painter Lê Huy Tiếp. He did not accept me as a student at first.”

“He said if I wanted to learn drawing, I had to change everything, even the way I dressed,” she said. “He told me to learn other things before coming to painting. From simple things like cooking to more complicated things like thinking visually.”

“Drawing was not as simple as I thought,” she said. “He taught me how to layout a picture, and add colours and light to express my ideas.”

Painter Lê Huy Tiếp said that Giang’s skill is in expressing the seasons and the dawn light to create a very gentle atmosphere.

“Her paintings have a sense of colour and light like those by artists in the 19th century,” Tiếp said. “At the same time, her paintings have expressions of modern painting.”

“Her technique is not new, but the way she expresses herself is unique, which sometimes stunned me,” he said. “She looks at life from a simple angle. Watching her paintings for a while, we can realise a desire, which has poured into the work in a gentle, delicate and profound way.”

Painter Bùi Thanh Tâm noted that Giang has touched audiences.

“Each of her paintings contains deep peace, helping audiences escape the present and their troubles.”

The exhibition runs at the Việt Nam Museum of Fine Arts, 66 Nguyễn Thái Học Street till August 1. — VNS