‘Through the eyes of Ming Ming’ exhibition at the Nook
Ming Ming Peters is back with another exhibition this time her art work is on display at The Nook in the Arts and Crafts Centre in Casemates.
The work for ‘Through the eyes of MM’ ranges from pencil to pastels and acrylics with both the Rock of Gibraltar and Japanese culture featuring heavily.
Known in particular for her origami work the artist has returned to painting and drawing simply because as a working mother the time, space and ability to work with intricate things has lessened thanks to busy children’s hands.
“I named them by order of when I started them,” she said.
“When I first came to Gibraltar I wanted to draw a lot of things with a Gibraltar theme and these paintings one, two and three have the Rock and apes. I like monkeys a lot and my familiar medium is the Chinese ink. So drawing the Rock and the monkeys I naturally want to use a material I am familiar with.”
“Then I moved to pastels on painting number four which is the runway.” She choose the runway because when she lived in Spain she would travel across it daily for work and she felt it was such a unique feature to Gibraltar.
On her other pastel work she said she takes a photograph of the area and uses that to paint from, areas such as Mid Harbours and Catalan Bay.
In addition, she has one of a the moon from Ocean Village, where she used a photograph her friend took.
“I found that if I painted the moon right in the middle it looks too perfect. Because I work in gaming and there are terms called under or over in betting and so for me this painting I call over under because you could say it is over or it is under,” she said.
More of her arcylic work can be seen in her series of kimono paintings.
“I like to work with arcylics because they give really strong colours,” she said.
“I drew these because I love kimonos. There was four in the original but one of them, the summer one, is sold.”
“In Asian culture the weather changing is a big thing for us. You change your diet and drink more soup in winter and in summer you eat light. But, it is also in the clothes we wear.”
“The colour is different because we say in winter it is such a cold environment that you want to dress in warm firey colours. While in Autumn the leaves fall down so to balance you want to dress yourself with more spring things. It is an interesting contradiction,” she added.
The kimonos feature the crane and cherry blossom, two things Japan is known for.
One piece that is on it’s own is of a kimono with the words of a song on it.
“I like gold and sparking things, so I imagined if I could somehow have the song on the kimono that would be a nice combination,” she explained.
In another piece ‘the parting’ is of a lady leaving a party and she used both acrylics and pastels in creating it.
The exhibition runs until December 2, 10am to 6pm.