Phong graduated from Hanoi College of Film and Theatre in 1987 and had a successful career as Chief Designer of the Vietnam Film Studio. He won an award for his outstanding designs at the Vietnam Film Festival. However, Phong’s passion for painting never stopped growing. In the early 1990s he decided to become a professional painter and focused on developing the unique painting style of his own.
Phong is famous for his paintings of Hanoi and her surrounding villages, the beauty of which has been his endless source of inspiration. Phong uses the colours to bring memories and dreams of his childhood to life – a mixture of happiness and melancholy; to tell stories about life as he sees it. In Phong’s exquisite landscapes, the audience sees a slight gloominess but also the light of hope and love for life. The atmosphere in Phong’s landscape is symbolic with bright and bold palette yet radiating tranquility, elegance and serenity. The iconic image of voluminous trees in his paintings is a symbol of life and strength sustained through hardship of weather and time. Human figures are rarely seen in Phong’s paintings yet there is a constant appearance of life – the warmness of the glowing light coming from a window, or the light from a corner of an old sleepy street… It’s all about the quiet yet intense beauty of human life, lit up by the magic glowing hue of yellow.
Phong has staged several solo and group exhibitions in Vietnam and overseas, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, Japan, UK, Switzerland and the USA. His paintings are enthusiastically sought for and passionately collected by art lovers internationally. Dao Hai Phong’s paintings are seen as many of the finest of Vietnam’s Contemporary Art.
“I am in search of artistic beauty in the most common places” – Dao Hai Phong
“Phong’s painting is an interlocution full of philosophical meaning amongst figures, colours and light” – Tran Thuc, Art Critic and Expert Art Researcher of Vietnam Fine Art Museum.