Artist of the Month: RIPPLE ROOT

For the month of May, we're featuring RIPPLE ROOT, a Singaporean artist duo made up of Estella Ng & Liquan Liew, who are known for their amazing works of nature and the everyday in crazy bold and bright colours! Read on to find out more about them and their work process in our interview with the pair.

Why the name ‘RIPPLE ROOT’? What significance does it have for the both of you?

Estella's Ripple, Liquan's Root...that's how we sign all our paintings anyway. When we first began this Estella was a lot more zany, Liquan the steady one. Our first series of paintings were of the Mangrove swamp, featuring quirky characters like Mudskippers and Orang Laut- there is always that element of humour; a tongue-in-cheek quality to our art where we refuse to take it or ourselves too seriously. 

We also love the idea of Duality, creating tension... having juxtaposing elements that strengthen the pieces. As much as our paintings ripple in motion, with jazzy strokes and expressive colour, there's also something grounding them, perhaps in the message, the narrative, or select technical details.

You work in an extremely organic collaborative manner when creating your works, working side by side and often swapping works over and adding elements to each other’s work. How do you think this process adds to the work your produce?

We knew it was something bigger than itself when we had our first painting session in Estella's living room one Saturday. We put our elements together on a piece of paper in simple A+B fashion but we always look back on this moment because we both saw a new voice getting created..I think we're so invested in the partnership because it pushes the quality of work further than it can go. Having someone of the same aesthetic wavelength add a fresh dimension... it's spontaneous, freeing and also very gratifying just watching the pieces unfold. With time it gets harder and harder to tell who painted what, our styles swirl together into one distinct Ripple Root point-of-view.

Do you ever run into conflict if you feel that the other person has added something you don’t like? Do you ever reject works because of this – what happens to these works?

We never had to toss anything out. We always run with our 'mistakes'; the silly paintings, they end up working for us... We are so much more about the process than the outcome, always ready for a 'challenge' -- after all, much of painting is problem-solving on a canvas. But ultimately it boils down to having complete trust. This is an unlikely scenario because artists are often so protective of their work and personal spaces.

There’s a very fauvist influence to your work, with painting scenes of the quotidian in often bright and wacky colours. Which artists would you consider to be huge inspirations to you and your work?

Certainly Matisse, he is always relevant. We also love David Hockney, Pierre Bonnard, Philip Guston. We look at a lot at primitive folk patterns, Southeast Asian art too... Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng and Latif Mohidin. 

 

 

To see more works by RIPPLE ROOT click here.