A child with candy-striped ooze pouring out his eyes, a woman eerily sleepwalking in the dead of night, a giant octopus drifting through swirling tides inside a flooded home: a dark sense of dread pervades the air, stifling and thick like a muggy summer night. These nightmarish scenes are the work of Singaporean painter Jolene Lai.
“Most of the time, it’s my surroundings that spark inspiration for me. Walking down a mundane street, a dilapidated house around the corner will catch my attention,” she says.“I have an impulse to tell stories with interesting details I stumbled upon.” She distills her daily experiences into these unsettling images. Each painting is like a crime scene, with clues scattered over the canvas, little by little drawing us in.
眼里流出鲜红色的漩涡、异夜里的梦游、巨大章鱼悠游在潮水汹涌的家中——这里弥漫着一股晦暗不明的恐怖气息，就像溽暑的湿气一样充斥，久久无法散去。这些梦魇般的超现实场景，都是新加坡画家 Jolene Lai 的画作。
“多数时候，我所处的空间、或是所在的周遭环境会触发我的创作灵感，也许是一个再平凡不过的街景、或是角落一间破旧不堪的老房子，这些细节都能引起我的注意。我总是有一股冲动想要把我发现到的东西，都通过说故事的手法表现出来。” 她将自己生活中的日常经验改编成这些令人悚立不安的画面，勾引出观者坐立不安的情绪，在她的精心编排下，每一幅画都像是一个案件的事发现场，线索就散落在画布上，一步一步地，将我们诱入其中。
