Andrew To
Andrew To
Andrew Tois a member of the Wong Tai Sin District Council, Hong Kong. Of Hakka ancestry, he is the former chairman of League of Social Democrats from 2010 to 2011, succeeding Wong Yuk-man. His wife, Jackie Hung, was a leader of Civil Human Rights Front and Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese...
mad earth done
If somehow I can, before I leave this earth, combine my absolutely mad freedom and excitement with truth, then I will have done something.
people fields wander
I don't really have studios. I wander around around people's attics, out in fields, in cellars, anyplace I find that invites me.
years feelings emotion
I've tried never to be easily satisfied, and I've been painting like fury now for forty years.... I have a feeling. You paint about as far as your emotions go, and that's about it.
new-york age firsts
At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.
father please-me people
I get letters from people about my work. The thing that pleases me most is that my work touches their feelings. In fact, they don't talk about the paintings. They end up telling me the story of their life or how their father died.
creative fleeting frozen
It's a moment that I'm after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.
feet imagination bits
I can't work completely out of my imagination-I must put my foot in a bit of truth-and then I can fly free.
emotional purpose crafts
My aim is not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power and emotional content.
dream art painting
I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.
art emotional thinking
I think one's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes. I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people I do.
thinking alive environment
I think a person permeates a spot, and a lost presence makes the environment timeless to me, keeps an area alive. It pulsates because of that.
art good-friend men
I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers."
powerful superficial-things technique
To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion, before I die, that's deeper than any emotion that I've ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it.
fall autumn winter
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn't show.