Untitled,

2005

Tran achieved the carefully modulated tones of her rose paintings with a single layer of oil color, using multiple gradients of the same hue. "I use color to create effects," she says, "not with paint but with light." As with a dark Rembrandt, to which one’s eyes must adjust in order to pierce the gloom, or a Chan Buddhist painting so pale that it requires patient and meditative viewing, these paintings require extended visual engagement. For Tran, the goal is to become the rose, reminiscent of what Su Shi wrote of his tenth-century friend Wen Yuke, the first great master of bamboo painting: When Yuke painted bamboo, He saw bamboo, not himself. Nor was he simply unconscious of himself: Trancelike, he left his body. His body was transformed into bamboo, Creating inexhaustible freshness.