Fish Vase

Fish Vase - sometimes a vase, sometimes a fish (Charissa's youngest one's favourite protein ha!).

It's up to the owner which way this painting hangs. It may be a fish in the nursery when you sing "1, 2, 3, 4, 5 once I caught a fish alive...", or a vase in the kitchen. Charissa hopes her paintings enable stories to be told, perhaps trigger a song or nursery rhyme, bring a smile and inject life and fun into a space.

She wanted to make her children laugh, to make them guess and tilt their heads as to what this was a painting of!

The black brush strokes of the subject is reminiscent of the high school days when Charissa practised Chinese calligraphy as part of her extracurricular. The Fish Vase sits on a white washed background, under which lies an abstract piece of expressive mark making and field of colour. Charissa wanted each layer to be able to stand on it's own and yet together create curiosity and draw the viewer in.

This painting is composed of acrylic on canvas. It is signed on the side.

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Charissa is a self-taught artist whose artistic style never really "grew up". She maintained her childish style of drawing through scribbles and doodles in the margins of her notebooks into the corporate world after graduating.

Since becoming a mum in 2013, Charissa re-discovered intuitive mark marking through her observing her children in their play. She is fascinated with the freedom and boundless imagination kids naturally possess in the creation of their works. They inspire her to be free in expression, colour and movement in combination with her 'left-handed state of mind' and abstracted perspectives.

In turn, the themes of her works are centered around her children along with a dose of nostalgia from her own childhood. She wants to gift fun and spark joy through her art.

A maestro once said "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." and she is determined to resolve this.