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By ASC Charlotte Blog December 3, 2021

ASC Fellowship Helps Malu Tan Add the Human Form to Her Body of Work

ASC 2021 Emerging Creators Fellowship recipient Malu Tan. Photo by Jon Strayhorn.
By Page Leggett

Malu Tan is a fulltime, award-winning artist who’s probably best known for her abstract work.

But her status as a professional doesn’t mean she’s stopped being a student occasionally.

“We have to continue to grow and challenge ourselves,” said the Charlotte-based painter. “That’s the value of this grant. It helped me improve as an artist.”

Tan was one of six emerging artists to receive a $5,000 ASC Emerging Creators Fellowship, which supports creatives with evolving practices.

She wanted to advance her technical skill and understanding of painting the figure in the environment with a goal of expanding and elevating work on her “When Nature Takes Back” series, which explores the concept of, as she says, “nature taking back what was originally hers.”

Tan had been at work on a series of large-scale (50 inches by 40 inches) paintings of nature taking over manmade environments – red ferns overwhelming an abandoned purple factory, a fire engulfing a peaceful porch scene, tree branches bursting into someone’s living room.

All these paintings were focused on the glory and terror of nature and devoid of the human figure – even though it was humans that had originally taken from nature.

“My theory was if you put a person in the painting, then you experience that thing according to that person,” she said. “Somehow, when you put a person there, the dynamics of the painting change. I wanted to advance myself, go back to class and explore that.

“I’ve always been very interested in the New York Studio School (NYSS) of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture,” she said. “The original Whitney [Museum] was in their building, and it was donated eventually by the Whitney to the school, so it’s all very historic. I’ve never gotten to do a painting or a drawing marathon – a two-week intensive thing. It originally started as a drawing program. As an artist, you sort out a lot of things by drawing.”

The COVID lockdown in 2020 gave Tan the time to explore drawing the human form. ASC provided the funding for her four-week painting marathon with Graham Nixon, NYSS founder.

Tan is accustomed to painting intuitively. The NYSS classes forced her to paint in a new way.

And to problem solve.

She and her fellow students were painting live models in various poses – and then they experimented with putting one figure in the foreground and one in the background.

So, it’s not just the human form. It’s scale, balance, color.

Her addition of humans can be viewed as both ominous (“Is nature going to overtake them, too?”) and with a sense of justice (“If humans tried to destroy or tame nature, shouldn’t nature take back what was hers?”).

Humans are both perpetrators and victims here. They’re (we’re?) perhaps oblivious to their role in subjugating nature and their status as potential target.

Tan did much more than add humans to her work. She changed the narrative.

“Normally you get grant money to continue your work, but this one is designed to help you improve yourself,” Tan said. “It’s amazing. I can’t express how grateful I am for it.”

CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR EMERGING, ESTABLISHED CREATIVES

ASC is accepting applications from Mecklenburg County-based creatives for 2022 Creative Renewal Fellowships and Emerging Creators Fellowships through Jan. 24, 2022, at noon.

Creatives who want to learn about the eligibility requirements and application process for both fellowships are encouraged to attend one of our in-person or virtual info sessions:

In-Person:

Virtual: