Aya Ng's continuous lines

Lines are drawn and everything is black and white, but Aya Ng's art is far from simple. She begins, as most do, with a single point. But what comes next is unusual and intriguing, because it is only when the piece is complete that she lifts the pen from the paper. This is no magic trick, nor is it anything postmodern, such as the dot is the entire picture. What Ng does is continuous line drawing, which she says she has been working on for a few years now. Last month, she held her first solo exhibit "Continuous" at Kaida gallery. An honors graduate of the University of the Philippines Industrial Design program, Ng's talents were spotted early on. Like most children, she got scolded for drawing on walls. Unlike most children, she took drawing and painting lessons at Boston Gallery with artist Vincent Padilla. As a child, she would draw a circle on the floor and sit inside it. "I would pretend it's a force field to protect me from all the scary things," she shared. At 22, Ng still believes in the power of drawing lines. "I like the fact that artists don’t need to open their mouths to express themselves. All they need is a pen and a sheet of paper," she says when asked what it is about artists that she admires. "Basically, the idea is that the work is composed of one single line," she explains, adding that the style is a huge challenge. "It hinders me to have a pause and think it through. I can’t stop and think of what to draw next or check if it looks proportional, balanced and whatnot. With this technique, you can’t do those things because you have to be spontaneous and quick," she says. The result is surreal pieces that flow from the artist's imagination, spilling onto the paper. Unbridled fancy is tempered by her steady hand, and looking at her artwork, one gets a sense of an invisible frame despite the apparent wildness. Dreamy and frightening at the same time, Ng draws a landscape of flowers growing, birds in flight. Her art is like water, too, ebbing and flowing, adopting the shape of its container. Webs, lamps, mushrooms, fans, faces and a central omniscient agimat eye figure in her art. Much like ink that spreads upon contact, her ideas expand, and seep into the viewers' mind. "Most times I don’t have a plan on what to do or what to draw. I like to let the strokes and my feelings lead me to the end result," says Ng. Ng, who is currently practicing and teaching design in Cebu, says she wants to expand to designing products and furniture. "I want to fuse art and design with my future projects," she says. She also wants to experiment with other mediums and collaborating with other artists, filmmakers and designers. "I'm thinking of creating bigger works and more art videos," she says. Art videos are another of Ng's outlets, and a stop motion video installation showing her in the process of continuous line drawing is part of the exhibit. The video gives the audience an intimate view of the artist and her art, and the process itself is a piece worth seeing. In her own words, the exhibit shows that "everything is connected and intertwined. It is a journey of my life experiences, thoughts, dreams and wanders." - GMANews.TV Aya Ng is a member of Ang Ilustrador ng Kabataan and has illustrated her first book, The Marriage of Ragkuunagwa and Fanna, retold orally by Lucas Badong. She also designs shirts for her own brand, Lupang Hinirang Art Project. She blogs at http://triangleytriangle.wordpress.com/.