By Tram Nguyen
Globe Correspondant
“ Beauty transcends joy or sorrow. It all becomes color and feeling.”
Khoi Trong Nguyen plots against time.
If he uses his breaks at work to think or skech, he can be closer to conceptualizing another painting.
If he eats lunch in his car, he can listen to a recordind of his music on the tape desk and make note for cerrections
Then, if he rushes home with an idea and paint until it has taken some shape on the canvas, he can grab a bowl of rice and eat dinner while he comtemplates it.
“I never leave a single hour, a single minute empty,” said the 48th years old Vietnamese Artist. “Whatever time I can work, I work. No waiting.”
Nguyen is obsessed with harnessing as much time as possible for his art because, he said, he know how easy it is for Vietnamese Artist to “die” in American.
Most artists couldn’t take their paintings with them when they left Vietnam, and then the rigors of building a new life here make it hard to keep painting, said Hai Van Ha, president of the Vietnamese Community of Massachusetts.
In the Boston area, Nguyen is one of the few working Vietnamese Artist – may be the only one, for all the art and Vietnamese American community know.
He is the first and only Vietnamese artist to exhibit here, most recently at Harvard’s Hilles Library Gallery and City Hall’s Scollay Square Art Gallery.
He is also the only one most people in the community have heard of.
But despite being the foremost Vietnamese Artist in the area, as one community newspaper editor called him, Nguyen struggles daily to keep his art alive.
“ People Praise my productivity, but it is only possible because I put in monstrous amount of time, “he said. “Painting in such difficult circumstances, the most important thing is to be in love with it.”
Nguyen’s passion for art drives him through the challenges of adjusting to a new country and breaking into its art scene.
He came to American in 1988, joining his wife and two children who had left Vietnam in 1975. He lived first in Wesminster. Calf., working as a cartoonist for Vietnamese Daily Nguoi Viet. He moved to Massachusetts when a friend told him of a job opening in a factory that makes reproduction of furniture from various artistic periods.
Nguyen lives in Waltham, in a modest, tastefully decorated house on a quiet street.
Paintings adorn the walls. Several are of a dark- haired, gentle-eyed woman – his wife Mai.
A compact man with a handlebar moustache, Nguyen is subdued and can be some- what laconic when talking about himself.
But words pour out, eyes kindle and arms flail once he is deep in a discussion of art and art theory.
“Art is simple, but it can become extremely complicated, “he said. “ Why is it simple? Because beauty is already there, naturally. And what is beautyful? Beauty is something which we can;t explain but can sense, like a smile. Or a pair of sad eyes.
“ Beauty transcends joy or sorrow,” he went on. “ It all becomes color and feeling. Love-It’s a canvas of color. The most important thing for an artist is to find it and drag it out. Where to look is the question for an artist.
“And where is beauty? No matter where youare there is beauty,” he said. “ It is already there in the earth and in our beings.
Nguyen waves aside the hardships in his life as mere distractions in his pursuit of the beautyful.
And he has found beauty even through the upheavals of Vietnam War, the trauma of his people’s displacement and the loneliness of 13 years separated from his family.
Nguyen doesn’t elaborate on the personal effect these events had on him. But his art conveys much that he leaves unsaid.
One paiting, done in gray and black, shows a child with despair in hic eyes and a mouth opend in a soundless cry. Behind him is the justing prow of a boat.
In another. cubes of blue form the sky and sea. Splashed onto this serene expanse are four splotches of red - for blood.
A painting done in the years following the fall of Saigon in 1975 is titled “ San Khay Khuya” meaning, roughtly, “a darkened stage.” It is of clowns, actors and other theater characters after a performance, when thay return to their true natures. Each one is alone with their thoughts, weary and isolated.
Nguyen allows that the painting also conveys his feelings after being separated from his family.
Working in Saigon during the war, he paid little attention to political affairs and never dreames that south Vietnam would collapse while his family was away in the coastal town of Vung Tau. They flet with the first exodus of refugees, but Nguyen would not be able to leave the country until 1988.
Not all his paintings are bleak. Many throb with cubes og vibrant colors and undulating shapes, reflecting the influence of European artists such as Magritte, Dali and Gauguin.
Not long after moving here, Nguyen was struck with the intense green of springtime in New England. The result was “ Troi thang 5 “. or “ The Sky in May.” A Green frame house and tree stand on a green hill touched by golden sunlight, while the sky mirror the earth’s scenery with patches of pastel.
When Nguyen gets painter’s block, he likes to strum his guitar and write songs; he plans to produce a CD next year.
Most Vietnamese in the area know him better as a singer, since he often performs at community concert and festivals.
“He sings pretty well. But he paints better.” said his friend Phan Chan, who helped him get his first exhibition at Emmanuel College and continues to look out for his career.
Nguyen’s main regret since immigrating here is his failure to master English.
“ I really wish I could comminicate with American artists, but I have neither the ability nor the occasion.” he said.
Nevertheless, Nguyen’s City Hall Exhibition was one of the most popular ever shown there in terms of how many paintings were sold, said Bruce Rossley, Boston’s commisioner of cultural affairs, who owns two of the paintings.
“ He does communicate. He realy communicates far stronger his art than 95 percent of people through language.” Rossley said.
