Empty Wall

I bought a painting for myself for my birthday (today).

Ellie and I ducked into the Empty Wall Gallery to find some peace from the traffic on Luong Van Can Street in Hanoi a couple of days before Christmas. While millions of motorbike riders made their way home, and street-food vendors peddled their dumplings and tapioca drinks, we enjoyed a lovely meeting with Hai Yen and her paintings.

I noticed an oil painting of a huge Buddha face with three small monks beneath it and some others featuring flowers I had seen all over Vietnam. Some wonderful lacquer paintings attracted Ellie's attention. We talked about the prices of paintings and where the artists' work is hanging around the city. Then Hai Yen pointed the way upstairs, where we discovered more paintings in the style of the Buddha face.

Ellie and Hai Yen moved the paintings around into groupings, and we sat comfortably considering which ones Ellie might buy.

Ellie has a large art collection that reflects her postings in Ukraine, Armenia, Central Asia and Pakistan, her travels and her long association with Poland; she is used to assessing art. I have decided rather late in life that I deserve art, so I hung back from the negotiations about the paintings.

In the end, Ellie bought a lacquer painting, and I bought some abstract lacquer pendants and bracelets. We left Empty Wall with warm memories of the gallery as a refuge from Hanoi's bustle and of Hai Yen as a knowledgeable guide to Hanoi's art scene. I asked the name of the artist of the work that caught our attention. Ellie told Hai Yen that she would come back after our cruise on Halong Bay if she decided to buy one of the paintings. Hai Yen reminded her that a collector in Singapore had expressed interest in the painting that she had paid the most attention to. We left the gallery to pack for the cruise.

On Christmas day I asked Ellie if she was planning to go back to Empty Wall for the painting. She said the work wasn't haunting her. "But it's haunting you," she added.

After the long drive back to Hanoi from Cat Ba Harbor and a moment of negotiation about the beds in our hotel room, we headed back to Empty Wall. I decided that I would buy the painting of three monks moving away from the viewer into a golden mist if the gallery was open.

We found the spot on Luong Van Can Street, but had trouble finding the gallery because it turned out to be closed. We moved on to shopping for plates, chopsticks and clothes. I felt better about the extra silk outfits because I was saving some money by not buying the painting.

We went on to Cambodia (where we didn't see any paintings that appealed to us) and then home.

But the monks stuck with me.

I e-mailed Empty Wall about 10 days after I got home to Seguin, and Hai Yen sent several photos of work by Luong Trung, including "The Path of Monks." "My monks," as I had begun to think of them. Some of Trung's paintings had sold, but my monks were still available.

I sent the fee for the painting and shipping by Western Union to Hanoi. Hai Yen sent the painting by Fedex to Seguin. (This is a good side of globalization.)

The painting arrived in three days after passing through Subic Bay in the Phillipines and Anchorage, Alaska. (Package tracking is a good side of the Web.)



Mr. Luong Trung is a young artist, born in 1981. He has an impressive cultural education in Hanoi's fine art and cinematography universities. He has exhibited widely, including participation in the National Fine Art Exhibition of Vietnam in 2005. U.S. and Australian collectors, like Ellie and me, are taking note of his style and his works are turning up in more and more collections.

Ask me about Empty Wall. I can tell you how to contact Hai Yen to learn more about the artists she represents.

Gym Source